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THE  LIBRARIES 


NOW  IT  CAN   BE 
TOLD 


Now  It  Can  Be  Told 


B31 


Philip   Qihhs 


Frontispiece 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 


5  ^ 


Cj  3S''f5 


Now  It  Can  Be  Told 


Copyright  1920,  by  Harper  &  Brotliers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  April,  lyjo 

D-U 


CONTENTS 
Preface vil 

Part  One 

PAGE 

Observers  and  Commanders i 

Part  Tzvo 
The  School  of  Courage 63 

Part  Three 
The  Nature  of  a  Battle 149 

Part  Four 
A  Winter  of  Discontent 203 

Part  Five 
The  Heart  of  a  City 285 

Part  Six 
Psychology  on  the  Somme /34 


Part  Seven 
The  Fields  of  Armageddon 447 

Part  Eight  

For  What  Men  Died (  S^V 


PREFACE 

In  this  book  I  have  written  about  some  aspects  of  the 
war  which,  I  beheve,  the  world  must  know  and  remember, 
not  only  as  a  memorial  of  men's  courage  in  tragic  years, 
but  as  a  warning  of  what  will  happen  again — surely — if 
a  heritage  of  evil  and  of  folly  is  not  cut  out  of  the  hearts  of 
peoples.  Here  it  is  the  reality  of  modern  warfare  not  only 
as  it  appears  to  British  soldiers,  of  whom  I  can  tell,  but  to 
soldiers  on  all  the  fronts  where  conditions  were  the  same. 

What  I  have  written  here  does  not  cancel,  nor  alter, 
nor  deny  anything  in  my  daily  narratives  of  events  on  the 
western  front  as  they  are  now  published  in  book  form. 
They  stand,  I  may  claim  sincerely  and  humbly,  as  a 
truthful,  accurate,  and  tragic  record  of  the  battles  in 
France  and  Belgium  during  the  years  of  war,  broadly 
pictured  out  as  far  as  I  could  see  and  know.  My  duty, 
then,  was  that  of  a  chronicler,  not  arguing  why  things 
should  have  happened  so  nor  giving  reasons  why  they 
should  not  happen  so,  but  describing  faithfully  many  of 
the  things  I  saw,  and  narrating  the  facts  as  I  found  them, 
as  far  as  the  censorship  would  allow.  After  early,  hostile 
days  it  allowed  nearly  all  but  criticism,  protest,  and  of 
the  figures  of  loss. 

The  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  get  deeper  into  the  truth 
of  this  war  and  of  all  war — not  by  a  more  detailed  narra- 
tive of  events,  but  rather  as  the  truth  was  revealed  to  the 
minds  of  men,  in  many  aspects,  out  of  their  experience; 
and  by  a  plain  statement  of  realities,  however  painful, 
to  add  something  to  the  world's  knowledge  out  of  which 
men  of  good-will  may  try  to  shape  some  new  system  of 
relationship  between  one  people  and  another,  some  new 
code  of  international  morality,  preventing  or  at  least 
postponing  another  massacre  of  youth  Hke  that  five  years' 
sacrifice  of  boys  of  which  I  was  a  witness. 


Part   One 

OBSERVERS  AND 
COMMANDERS 


NOW    IT    CAN    BE 
TOLD 

OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS 


WHEN  Germany  threw  down  her  challenge  to  Rus- 
sia and  France,  and  England  knew  that  her 
Imperial  power  would  be  one  of  the  prizes  of  German 
victory  (the  common  people  did  not  think  this,  at  first, 
but  saw  only  the  outrage  to  Belgium,  a  brutal  attack  on 
civilization,  and  a  glorious  adventure),  some  newspaper 
correspondents  were  sent  out  from  London  to  report  the 
proceedings,  and  I  was  one  of  them. 

We  went  in  civilian  clothes  without  military  passports 
— the  War  Office  was  not  giving  any — ^with  bags  of  money 
which  might  be  necessary  for  the  hire  of  motor-cars, 
hotel  life,  and  the  bribery  of  doorkeepers  in  the  ante- 
chambers of  war,  as  some  of  us  had  gone  to  the  Balkan 
War,  and  others.  The  Old  Guard  of  war  correspondents 
besieged  the  War  Office  for  official  recognition  and  were 
insulted  day  after  day  by  junior  staff-officers  who  knew 
that  "K"  hated  these  men  and  thought  the  press  ought 
to  be  throttled  in  time  of  war;  or  they  were  beguiled  into 
false  hopes  by  officials  who  hoped  to  go  in  charge  of  them 
and  were  told  to  buy  horses  and  sleepmg-bags  and  be 
ready  to  start  at  a  moment's  notice  for  the  front. 

The  moment's  notice  was  postponed  for  months.  .  .  . 

The  younger  ones  did  not  wait  for  it.    They  took  their 


4  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

chance  of  "seeing  something,"  without  authority,  and 
made  wild,  desperate  efforts  to  break  through  the  barrier 
that  had  been  put  up  against  them  by  French  and  British 
staffs  in  the  zone  of  war.  Many  of  them  were  arrested, 
put  into  prison,  let  out,  caught  again  in  forbidden  places, 
rearrested,  and  expelled  from  France.  That  was  after 
fantastic  adventures  in  which  they  sav/  what  war  meant 
in  civilized  countries  where  vast  populations  were  made 
fugitives  of  fear,  where  millions  of  women  and  children 
and  old  people  became  wanderers  along  the  roads  in 
a  tide  of  human  misery,  with  the  red  flame  of  war  behind 
them  and  following  them,  and  where  the  first  battalions 
of  youth,  so  gay  in  their  approach  to  war,  so  confident 
of  victory,  so  careless  of  the  dangers  (which  they  did 
not  know),  came  back  maimed  and  mangled  and  blinded 
and  wrecked,  in  the  backwash  of  retreat,  which  presently 
became  a  spate  through  Belgium  and  the  north  of  France, 
swamping  over  many  cities  and  thousands  of  villages  and 

/many  fields.  Those  young  writing-men  who  had  set  out 
in  a  spirit  of  adventure  went  back  to  Fleet  Street  with  a 
queer  look  in  their  eyes,  unable  to  write  the  things  they 
had  seen,  unable  to  tell  them  to  people  who  had  not  seen 
and  could  not  understand.  Because  there  was  no  code 
of  words  which  would  convey  the  picture  of  that  wild 
agony  of  peoples,  that  smashing  of  all  civilized  laws,  to 
men  and  women  who  still  thought  of  war  in  terms  of 
heroic  pageantry. 

"Had  a  good  time?"  asked  a  colleague  along  the  corri- 
dor, hardly  waiting  for  an  answer. 

"A  good  time!"  .  .  .  God!  .  .  .  Did  people  think  it 

XWas  amusing  to  be  an  onlooker  of  world-tragedy?  .  .  . 
One  of  them  remembered  a  lady  of  France  with  a  small  boy 
who  had  fled  from  Charleville,  which  was  in  flames  and 
smoke.  She  was  weak  with  hunger,  with  dirty  and 
bedraggled  skirts  on  her  flight,  and  she  had  heard  that  her 
husband  v/as  in  the  battle  that  was  now  being  fought 
round  their  own  town.  She  was  brave — pointed  out  the 
line  of  the  German  advance  on  the  map — and  it  was  in  a 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  5 

troop-train  crowded  with  French  soldiers — and  then  burst 
into  wild  weeping,  clasping  the  hand  of  an  English  writing- 
man  so  that  her  nails  dug  into  his  flesh.  I  remember  her 
still. 

"Courage,  maman!  Courage,  p'tite  maman!"  said  the 
boy  of  eight. 

Through  Amiens  at  night  had  come  a  French  army  in 
retreat.  There  were  dead  and  wounded  on  their  wagons. 
Cuirassiers  stumbled  as  they  led  their  tired  horses. 
Crowds  of  people  with  white  faces,  like  ghosts  in  the 
darkness,  stared  at  their  men  retreating  like  this 
through  their  city,  and  knew  that  the  enemy  was  close 
behind. 

"Nous  sommes  perdus!"  whispered  a  woman,  and  gave 
a  wailing  cry. 

People  were  fighting  their  way  into  railway  trucks  at 
every    station    for    hundreds    of   miles    across    northern 
France.     Women  were  beseeching  a  place  for  the  sake 
of  their  babes.     There  was  no  food  for  them  on  journeys 
of  nineteen  hours  or  more;   they  fainted  with  heat  andj 
hunger.     An  old  woman  died,  and  her  corpse  blocked  up! 
the  lavatory.     At  night  they  slept  on  the  pavements  in ' 
cities  invaded  by  fugitives. 

At  Furnes  in  Belgium,  and  at  Dunkirk  on  the  coast  of 
France,  there  were  columns  of  ambulances  bringing  in  an 
endless  tide  of  wounded.  They  were  laid  out  stretcher 
by  stretcher  in  station-yards,  five  hundred  at  a  time. 
Some  of  their  faces  were  masks  of  clotted  blood.  Some 
of  their  bodies  were  horribly  torn.  They  breathed  with 
a  hard  snuffle.     A  foul  smell  came  from  them. 

At  Chartres  they  were  swilling  over  the  station  hall  with 
disinfecting  fluid  after  getting  through  with  one  day's 
wounded.  The  French  doctor  in  charge  had  received  a 
telegram  from  the  director  of  medical  services:  "Make 
ready  for  forty  thousand  wounded."  It  was  during  the 
first  battle  of  the  Marne. 

"It  is  impossible!"  said  the  French  doctor.  .  .  . 

Four   hundred   thousand    people  were   in   flight   from 


6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Antwerp,  into  which  big  shells  were  falling,  as  English 
correspondents  flattened  themselves  against  the  walls  and 
said,  "God  in  heaven!"  Two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
people  coming  across  the  Scheldt  in  rowing-boats,  sailing- 
craft,  rafts,  invaded  one  village  in  Holland.  They  had  no 
food.  Children  were  mad  with  fright.  Young  mothers 
had  no  milk  in  their  breasts.  It  was  cold  at  night  and 
there  were  only  a  few  canal-boats  and  fishermen's  cot- 
tages, and  in  them  were  crowds  of  fugitives.  The  odor 
of  human  filth  exuded  from  them,  as  I  smell  it  now, 
and  sicken  in  remembrance.  ...  , 

Then  Dixmude  was  in  flames,  and  Pervyse,  and  many 
other  towns  from  the  Belgian  coast  to  Switzerland.  In 
Dixmude  young  boys  of  France — fusiliers  marins — lay 
dead  about  the  Grande  Place.  In  the  Town  Hall,  faUing 
to  bits  under  shell-fire,  a  colonel  stood  dazed  and  waiting 
for  death  amid  the  dead  bodies  of  his  men — one  so  young, 
so  handsome,  lying  there  on  his  back,  with  a  waxen  face, 
staring  steadily  at  the  sky  through  the  broken  roof.  .  .  . 

At  Nieuport-les-Bains  one  dead  soldier  lay  at  the  end 
of  the  esplanade,  and  a  little  group  of  living  were  huddled 
under  the  wall  of  a  red-brick  villa,  watching  other  villas 
falhng  like  card  houses  in  a  town  that  had  been  built 
for  love  and  pretty  women  and  the  lucky  people  of  the 
world.  British  monitors  lying  close  into  shore  were 
answering  the  German  bombardment,  firing  over  Nieuport 
to  the  dunes  by  Ostend.  From  one  monitor  came  a 
group  of  figures  with  white  masks  of  cotton-wool  tipped 
with  wet  blood.  British  seamen,  and  all  blind,  with  the 
dead  body  of  an  officer  tied  up  in  a  sack.  .  .  . 

"0  Jesu! .  .  .  O  maman! .  .  .  O  ma  pauvre  p'tite  femme! 
.  .  .  O  Jesu!    O  Jesu!" 

From  thousands  of  French  soldiers  lying  wounded  or 
parched  in  the  burning  sun  before  the  battle  of  the 
Marne  these  cries  went  up  to  the  blue  sky  of  France  in 
August  of  '14.  They  were  the  cries  of  youth's  agony  in 
war.     Afterward   I  went   across  the   fields  where  they 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  7 

fought  and  saw  their  bodies  and  their  graves,  and  the 
proof  of  the  victory  that  saved  France  and  us.  The 
German  dead  had  been  gathered  into  heaps  hke  autumn 
leaves.  They  w^ere  soaked  in  petrol  and  oily  smoke  wu.s 
rising  from  them.  .  .  . 

That  was  after  the  retreat  from  Mons,  and  the  French 
retreat  along  all  their  line,  and  the  thrust  that  drew  very 
close  to  Paris,  when  I  saw  our  little  Regular  Army,  the 
"Old  Contemptibles,"  on  their  way  back,  with  the  Ger- 
man hordes  following  close.  Sir  John  French  had  his 
headquarters  for  the  night  in  Creil.  English,  Irish, 
Scottish  soldiers,  stragglers  from  units  still  keeping  some 
kind  of  order,  were  coming  in,  bronzed,  dusty,  parched 
with  thirst,  with  light  wounds  tied  round  with  rags,  with 
bhstered  feet.  French  soldiers,  bearded,  dirty,  thirsty 
as  dogs,  crowded  the  station  platforms.  They,  too,  had 
been  retreating  and  retreating.  A  company  of  sappers 
had  blown  up  forty  bridges  of  France.  Under  a  gas- 
lamp  in  a  foul-smelling  urinal  I  copied  out  the  diary  of 
their  officer.  Some  spiritual  faith  upheld  these  men. 
*'Wait,"  they  said.  "In  a  few  days  we  shall  give  them  a 
hard  knock.  They  will  never  get  Paris.  Jamais  de  la 
vier  ... 

In  Beauvais  there  was  hardly  a  living  soul  when  three 
English  correspondents  went  there,  after  escape  from 
Amiens,  now  in  German  hands.  A  tall  cuirassier  stood 
by  some  bags  of  gunpowder,  ready  to  blow  up  the  bridge. 
The  streets  were  strewn  with  barbed  wire  and  broken 
bottles.  ...  In  Paris  there  was  a  great  fear  and  solitude, 
except  where  grief-stricken  crowds  stormed  the  railway 
stations  for  escape  and  where  French  and  British  soldiers 
' — stragglers  all — drank  together,  and  sang  above  their 
broken  glasses,  and  cursed  the  war  and  the  Germans. 

And  down  all  the  roads  from  the  front,  on  every  day  in 
every  month  of  that  first  six  months  of  war — as  after- 
ward— came  back  the  tide  of  wounded;  wounded  every- 
where, maimed  men  at  every  junction;  hospitals  crowded 
with  blind  and  dying  and  moaning  men.  .  .  . 


8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"Had  an  interesting  time?"  asked  a  man  I  wanted  to 
kill  because  of  his  smug  ignorance,  his  damnable  indif- 
ference, his  impregnable  stupidity  of  cheerfulness  in  this 
world  of  agony.  I  had  changed  the  clothes  which  were 
smeared  with  blood  of  French  and  Belgian  soldiers  whom 
I  had  helped,  in  a  week  of  strange  adventure,  to  carry  to 
the  surgeons.  As  an  onlooker  of  war  I  hated  the  people 
who  had  not  seen,  because  they  could  not  understand. 
All  these  things  I  had  seen  in  the  first  nine  months  I  put 
vdown  in  a  book  called  The  Soul  of  the  War,  so  that  some 
might  know;  but  it  was  only  a  few  who  understood.  .  .  . 


II 

In  191 5  the  War  Office  at  last  moved  in  the  matter  of 
war  correspondents.  Lord  Kitchener,  prejudiced  against 
them,  was  being  broken  down  a  little  by  the  pressure  of 
public  opinion  (mentioned  from  time  to  time  by  members 
of  the  government),  which  demanded  more  news  of  their 
men  in  the  field  than  was  given  by  bald  communiques 
from  General  Headquarters  and  by  an  "eye-witness" 
who,  as  one  paper  had  the  audacity  to  say,  wrote  nothing 
but  "eye-wash."  Even  the  enormous,  impregnable  stu- 
pidity of  our  High  Command  on  all  matters  of  psychology 
was  penetrated  by  a  vague  notion  that  a  few  "writing 
fellows"  might  be  sent  out  with  permission  to  follow  the 
armies  in  the  field,  under  the  strictest  censorship,  in 
order  to  silence  the  popular  clamor  for  more  news. 
Dimly  and  nervously  they  apprehended  that  in  order  to 
stimulate  the  recruiting  of  the  New  Army  now  being 
called  to  the  colors  by  vulgar  appeals  to  sentiment  and 
passion,  it  might  be  well  to  "write  up"  the  glorious  side 
of  war  as  it  could  be  seen  at  the  base  and  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  transport,  without,  of  course,  any  allusion  to  dead 
or  dying  men,  to  the  ghastly  failures  of  distinguished 
generals,  or  to  the  filth  and  horror  of  the  battlefields. 
They  could  not  understand,  nor  did  they  ever  understand 
(these  soldiers  of  the  old  school)  that  a  nation  which  was 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  9 

sending  all  its  sons  to  the  field  of  honor  desired  with  a 
deep  and  poignant  craving  to  know  how  those  boys  of 
theirs  were  Hving  and  how  they  were  dying,  and  what 
suffering  was  theirs,  and  what  chances  they  had  against 
their  enemy,  and  how  it  was  going  with  the  war  which 
was  absorbing  all  the  energy  and  wealth  of  the  people 
at  home. 

"Why  don't  they  trust  their  leaders?"  asked  the  army 
chiefs.     "Why  don't  they  leave  it  to  us?" 

"We  do  trust  you — with  some  misgivings,"  thought  the 
people,  "and  we  do  leave  it  to  you — though  you  seem  to 
be  making  a  mess  of  things — but  we  want  to  know  what 
we  have  a  right  to  know,  and  that  is  the  life  and  progress 
of  this  war  in  which  our  men  are  engaged.  We  want  to 
know  more  about  their  heroism,  so  that  it  shall  be  remem- 
bered by  their  people  and  known  by  the  w^orld;  about 
their  agony,  so  that  we  may  share  it  in  our  hearts;  and 
about  the  way  of  their  death,  so  that  our  grief  may  be 
softened  by  the  thought  of  their  courage.  We  will  not 
stand  for  this  anonymous  war;  and  you  are  wasting  time 
by  keeping  it  secret,  because  the  imagination  of  those 
who  have  not  joined  cannot  be  fired  by  cold  lines  which 
say,  'There  is  nothing  to  report  on  the  western  front.'  " 

In  March  of  19 15  I  went  out  with  the  first  body  of 
accredited  war  correspondents,  and  we  saw  some  of  the 
bad  places  where  our  nien  lived  and  died,  and  the  traffic 
to  the  lines,  and  the  mechanism  of  war  in  fixed  positions 
as  were  then  established  after  the  battle  of  the  Marne 
and  the  first  battle  of  Ypres.  Even  then  it  was  only  an 
experimental  visit.  It  was  not  until  June  of  that  year, 
after  an  adventure  on  the  French  front  in  the  Champagne,! 
that  I  received  full  credentials  as  a  war  correspondent 
with  the  British  armies  on  the  western  front,  and  joined 
four  other  men  who  had  been  selected  for  this  service, 
and  began  that  long  innings  as  an  authorized  onlooker  of 
war  which  ended,  after  long  and  dreadful  j^ears,  with  the 
Army  of  Occupation  beyond  the  Rhine. 


lo  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

III 

In  the  very  early  days  we  lived  in  a  small  old  house, 
called  by  courtesy  a  chateau,  in  the  village  of  Tatinghem, 
near  General  Headquarters  at  St.-Omer.  (Afterward  we 
shifted  our  quarters  from  time  to  time,  according  to  the 
drift  of  battle  and  our  convenience.)  It  was  very  peace- 
ful there  amid  fields  of  standing  corn,  where  peasant 
women  worked  while  their  men  were  fighting,  but  in  the 
motor-cars  supplied  us  by  the  army  (with  military  drivers, 
all  complete)  it  was  a  quick  ride  over  Cassel  Hill  to  the 
edge  of  the  Ypres  salient  and  the  farthest  point  where 
any  car  could  go  without  being  seen  by  a  watchful  enemy 
and  blown  to  bits  at  a  signal  to  the  guns.  Then  we 
walked,  up  sinister  roads,  or  along  communication 
trenches,  to  the  fire-step  in  the  front  line,  or  into  places 
like  "Plug  Street"  wood  and  Kemmel  village,  and  the 
ruins  of  Vermelles,  and  the  hues  by  Neuve  Chapelle — the 
training-schools  of  British  armies — where  always  birds  of 
death  were  on  the  wing,  screaming  with  high  and  rising 
notes  before  coming  to  earth  with  the  cough  that  killed. 
.  .  .  After  hours  in  those  hiding-places  where  boys  of  the 
New  Army  were  learning  the  lessons  of  war  in  dugouts 
and  ditches  under  the  range  of  German  guns,  back  again 
to  the  little  white  chateau  at  Tatinghem,  with  a  sweet 
scent  of  flowers  from  the  fields,  and  nightingales  singing 
in  the  woods  and  a  bell  tinkling  for  Benediction  in  the 
old  church  tower  beyond  our  gate. 

"To-morrow,"  said  the  colonel — our  first  chief — before 
driving  in  for  a  late  visit  to  G.  H.  Q.,  "we  will  go  to 
Armentiercs  and  see  how  the  'Kitchener'  boys  are  shaping 
in  the  line  up  there.     It  ought  to  be  interesting." 

The  colonel  was  profoundly  interested  in  the  technic 
of  war,  in  its  organization  of  supplies  and  transport,  and 
methods  of  command.  He  was  a  Regular  of  the  Indian 
Army,  a  soldier  by  blood  and  caste  and  training,  and  the 
noblest  type  of  the  old  school  of  Imperial  officer,  with 
obedience  to  command  as  a  religious  instinct;  of  stainless 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  ii 

honor,  I  think,  In  small  things  as  well  as  great,  with  a  deep 
love  of  England,  and  a  belief  and  pride  in  her  Imperial 
destiny  to  govern  many  peoples  for  their  own  good,  and 
with  the  narrowness  of  such  belief.  His  imagination  was 
limited  to  the  boundaries  of  his  professional  interests, 
though  now  and  then  his  humanity  made  him  realize  in  a 
perplexed  way  greater  issues  at  stake  in  this  war  than  the 
challenge  to  British  Empiry. 

One  day,  when  we  were  walking  through  the  desolation 
of  a  battlefield,  with  the  smell  of  human  corruption  about 
us,  and  men  crouched  in  chalky  ditches  below  their 
breastworks  of  sand-bags,  he  turned  to  a  colleague  of  mine 
and  said  in  a  startled  way: 

"This  must  never  happen  again!  Never!" 
It  will  never  happen  again  for  him,  as  for  many  others. 
He  was  too  tall  for  the  trenches,  and  one  day  a  German 
sniper  saw  the  red  glint  of  his  hat-band — he  was  on  the 
staff  of  the  nth  Corps — and  thought,  **a  gay  bird"! 
So  he  fell;  and  in  our  mess,  when  the  news  came,  we  were 
sad  at  his  going,  and  one  of  our  orderlies,  who  had  been 
his  body-servant,  wept  as  he  waited  on  us. 

• 
Late  at  night  the  colonel — that  first  chief  of  ours — • 
used  to  come  home  from  G.  H.  Q.,  as  all  men  called  General 
Headquarters  with  a  sense  of  mystery,  power,  and  inex- 
plicable industry  accomplishing — what?— in  those  ini- 
tials. He  came  back  with  a  cheery  shout  of,  "Fine 
weather  to-morrow!"  or,  "A  starry  night  and  all's  well!" 
looking  fine  and  soldierly  as  the  glare  of  his  headlights 
shone  on  his  tall  figure  with  red  tabs  and  a  colored  armlet. 
But  that  cheeriness  covered  secret  worries.  Night  after 
night,  in  those  early  weeks  of  our  service,  he  sat  in  his 
little  office,  talking  earnestly  with  the  press  officers — our 
censors.  They  seemed  to  be  arguing,  debating,  protest- 
ing, about  secret  influences  and  hostilities  surrounding 
us  and  them.  I  could  only  guess  what  it  was  all  about. 
It  all  seemed  to  make  no  difference  to  me  when  I  sat 
down  before  pieces  of  blank  paper  to  get  down  some  kind 


12  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

of  picture,  some  kind  of  impression,  of  a  long  day  in  places 
where  I  had  been  scared  awhile  because  death  was  on  the 
prowl  in  a  noisy  way  and  I  had  seen  it  pounce  on  human 
bodies.  I  knew  that  to-morrow  I  was  going  to  another 
little  peep-show  of  war,  where  I  should  hear  the  same 
noises.  That  talk  downstairs,  that  worry  about  some 
mystery  at  G.  H.  Q.  would  make  no  difference  to  the  life 
or  death  of  men,  nor  get  rid  of  that  coldness  which  came 
to  me  when  men  were  being  killed  nearby.  Why  all 
that  argument  .f" 

/  It  seemed  that  G.  H.  Q. — mysterious  people  in  a 
/mysterious  place — were  drawing  up  rules  for  war  cor- 
Irespondence  and  censorship;  altering  rules  made  the  day 
before,  formulating  new  rules  for  to-morrow,  establishing 
precedents,  writing  minutes,  initialing  reports  with, 
"Passed  to  you,"  or,  "I  agree,"  written  on  the  margin. 
The  censors  who  lived  with  us  and  traveled  with  us  and 
were  our  friends,  and  read  what  we  wrote  before  the  ink 
was  dry,  had  to  examine  our  screeds  with  microscopic 
eyes  and  with  infinite  remembrance  of  the  thousand  and 
one  rules.  Was  it  safe  to  mention  the  weather?  Would 
that  give  any  information  to  the  enemy?  Was  it  per- 
missible to  describe  the  smell  of  chloride-of-lime  in  the 
trenches,  or  would  that  discourage  recruiting?  That 
description  of  the  traffic  on  the  roads  of  war,  with  trans- 
port wagons,  gun-limbers,  lorries,  mules — how  did  that 
conflict  with  Rule  No.  17a  (or  whatever  it  was)  pro- 
hibiting all  mention  of  movements  of  troops? 

One  of  the  censors  working  late  at  night,  with  lines  of 
worry  on  his  forehead  and  little  puckers  about  his  eyes, 
turned  to  me  with  a  queer  laugh,  one  night  in  the  early 
days.  He  was  an  Indian  Civil  Servant,  and  therefore, 
by  every  rule,  a  gentleman  and  a  charming  fellow. 

"You  don't  know  what  I  am  risking  in  passing  your 
despatch!  It's  too  good  to  spoil,  but  G.  H.  Q.  will 
probably  find  that  it  conveys  accurate  information  to  the 
enemy  about  the  offensive  in  1925.  I  shall  get  the  sack — • 
3nd  oh,  the  difference  to  me!" 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  13 

It  appeared  that  G.  H.  Q.  was  nervous  of  us.  They 
suggested  that  our  private  letters  should  be  tested  for 
writing  in  invisible  ink.  between  the  lines.  They  were 
afraid  that,  either  deliberately  for  some  journaHstic  ad- 
vantage, or  in  sheer  ignorance  as  "outsiders,"  we  might 
hand  information  to  the  enemy  about  important  secrets. 
Belonging  to  the  old  caste  of  army  mind,  they  believed 
that  war  v/as  the  special  prerogative  of  professional  sol- 
diers, of  which  politicians  and  people  should  have  no 
knowledge.  Therefore  as  civilians  in  khaki  we  wer^ 
hardly  better  than  spies. 

The  Indian  Civil  Servant  went  for  a  stroll  with  me  in 
the  moonHght,  after  a  day  up  the  line,  where  young  men 
were  living  and  dying  in  dirty  ditches.  I  could  see  that 
he  was  worried,  even  angry. 

*'Those  people!"  he  said. 

''What  people?" 

"G.  H.  Q." 

"Oh,  Lord!"  I  groaned.  "Again.?"  and  looked  across 
the  fields  of  corn  to  the  dark  outline  of  a  convent  on  the 
hill  where  young  officers  were  learning  the  gentle  art  of 
killing  by  machine-guns  before  their  turn  came  to  be 
killed  or  crippled.  I  thought  of  a  dead  boy  I  had 
seen  that  day — or  yesterday  was  it? — kneeling  on  the 
fire-step  of  a  trench,  with  his  forehead  against  the 
parapet  as  though  in  prayer.  .  .  .  How  sweet  was 
the  scent  of  the  clover  to-night!  And  how  that  star 
twinkled  above  the  low  flashes  of  gun-fire  away  there  in 
the  salient. 

"They  want  us  to  waste  your  time,"  said  the  officer. 
"Those  were  the  very  words  used  by  the  Chief  of  Intelli- 
gence— in  writing  w^iich  I  have  kept.  'Waste  their 
time!'  .  .  .  I'll  be  damned  if  I  consider  my  work  is  to 
waste  the  time  of  war  correspondents.  Don't  those  good 
fools  see  that  this  is  not  a  professional  adventure,  like 
their  other  little  wars;  that  the  whole  nation  is  in  it,  and 
that  the  nation  demands  to  know  what  its  men  are 
doing?    They  have  a  right  to  know." 


14  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD, 

IV 

Just  at  first — though  not  for  long— there  was  a  touch 
of  hostihty  against  us  among  divisional  and  brigade  staffs, 
of  the  Regulars,  but  not  of  the  New  Army,  They,  too, 
suspected  our  motive  in  going  to  their  quarters,  wondered 
why  we  should  come  "spying  around,"  trying  to  "see 
things."  I  was  faintly  conscious  of  this  one  day  in  those 
very  early  times,  when  with  the  officer  who  had  been 
a  ruler  in  India  I  went  to  a  brigade  headquarters  of 
the  1st  Division  near  Vermelles.  It  was  not  easy  nor 
pleasant  to  get  there,  though  it  was  a  summer  day  with 
fleecy  clouds  in  a  blue  sky.  There  was  a  long  straight 
road  leading  to  the  village  of  Vermelles,  with  a  crisscross 
of  communication  trenches  on  one  side,  and,  on  the  other, 
fields  where  corn  and  grass  grew  rankly  in  abandoned 
fields.  Some  lean  sheep  were  browsing  there  as  though 
this  were  Arcady  in  days  of  peace.  It  was  not.  The 
red  ruins  of  Vermelles,  a  mile  or  so  away,  were  sharply 
defined,  as  through  stereoscopic  lenses,  in  the  quiver  of 
sunlight,  and  had  the  sinister  look  of  a  death-haunted 
place.  It  was  where  the  French  had  fought  their  way 
through  gardens,  walls,  and  houses  in  murderous  battle, 
before  leaving  it  for  British  troops  to  hold.  Across  it 
now  came  the  whine  of  shells,  and  I  saw  that  shrapnel 
bullets  were  kicking  up  the  dust  of  a  thousand  yards 
down  the  straight  road,  following  a  small  body  of  brown 
men  whose  tramp  of  feet  raised  another  cloud  of  dust, 
like  smoke.  They  were  the  only  representatives  of  hu- 
man life — besides  ourselves — in  this  loneliness,  though 
many  men  must  have  been  in  hiding  somewhere.  Then 
heavy  "crumps"  burst  in  the  fields  where  the  sheep  were 
browsing,  across  the  way  we  had  to  go  to  the  brigade 
headquarters. 

"How   about   it?"    asked   the   captain   with   me.     "I 
don't  like  crossing  that  field,  in  spite  of  the  buttercups 
and  daisies  and  the  little  frisky  lambs." 
"I  hate  the  idea  of  it,"  I  said. 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  15 

Then  we  looked  down  the  road  at  the  Httle  body  of 
brown  men.  They  were  nearer  now,  and  I  could  see  the 
face  of  the  officer  leading  them — a  boy  subaltern,  rather 
pale  though  the  sun  was  hot.  He  halted  and  saluted  my 
companion. 

**The  enemy  seems  to  have  sighted  our  dust,  sir.  His 
shrapnel  is  following  up  pretty  closely.  Would  you  advise 
me  to  put  my  men  under  cover,  or  carry  on?" 

The  captain  hesitated.  This  was  rather  outside  his 
sphere  of  influence.  But  the  boyishness  of  the  other 
officer  asked  for  help. 

**My  advice  is  to  put  your  men  into  that  ditch  and  keep 
them  there  until  the  strafe  is  over."  Some  shrapnel 
bullets  whipped  the  sun-baked  road  as  he  spoke. 

"Very  good,  sir." 

The  men  sat  in  the  ditch,  with  their  packs  against  the 
bank,  and  wiped  the  sweat  off  their  faces.  They  looked 
tired  and  dispirited,  but  not  alarmed. 

In  the  fields  behind  them — our  way — the  4.2's  (four- 
point-twos)  were  busy  plugging  holes  in  the  grass  and 
flowers,  rather  deep  holes,  from  which  white  smoke-clouds 
rose  after  explosive  noises, 

"With  a  little  careful  strategy  we  might  get  through," 
said  the  captain.  "There's  a  general  waiting  for  us,  and 
I  have  noticed  that  generals  are  impatient  fellows.  Let's 
try  our  luck." 

We  walked  across  the  wild  flowers,  past  the  sheep,  who 
only  raised  their  heads  in  meek  surprise  when  shells  came 
with  a  shrill,  intensifying  snarl  and  burrowed  up  the 
earth  about  them.  I  noticed  how  loudly  and  sweetly 
the  larks  were  singing  up  in  the  blue.  Several  horses  lay 
dead,  newly  killed,  with  blood  oozing  about  them,  and 
their  entrails  smoking.  We  made  a  half-loop  around 
them  and  then  struck  straight  for  the  chateau  which  was 
the  brigade  headquarters.  Neither  of  us  spoke  now. 
We  were  thoughtful,  calculating  the  chance  of  getting 
to  that  red-brick  house  between  the  shells.  It  was  just 
dependent  on  the  coincidence  of  time  and  place. 


i6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Three  men  jumped  up  from  a  ditch  below  a  brown  wall 
round  the  chateau  garden  and  ran  hard  for  the  gateway. 
A  shell  had  pitched  quite  close  to  them.  One  man 
laughed  as  though  at  a  grotesque  joke,  and  fell  as  he 
reached  the  courtyard.  Smoke  was  rising  from  the  out- 
houses, and  there  was  a  clatter  of  tiles  and  timbers,  after 
an  explosive  crash. 

"It  rather  looks,"  said  my  companion,  **as  though  the 
Germans  knew  there  is  a  party  on  in  that  charming 
house." 

If  was  as  good  to  go  on  as  to  go  back,  and  it  was  never 
good  to  go  back  before  reaching  one's  objective.  That 
was  bad  for  the  disciphne  of  the  courage  that  is  just 
beyond  fear. 

Two  gunners  were  killed  in  the  back  yard  of  the 
chateau,  and  as  we  went  in  through  the  gateway  a  ser- 
geant made  a  quick  jump  for  a  barn  as  a  shell  burst 
somewhere  close.  As  visitors  we  hesitated  between  two 
ways  into  the  chateau,  and  chose  the  easier;  and  it  was 
then  that  I  became  dimly  aware  of  hostility  against  me 
on  the  part  of  a  number  of  officers  in  the  front  hall.  The 
brigade  staff  was  there,  grouped  under  the  banisters.  I 
wondered  why,  and  guessed  (rightly,  as  I  found)  that  the 
center  of  the  house  might  have  a  better  chance  of  escape 
than  the  rooms  on  either  side,  in  case  of  direct  hits  from 
those  things  falling  outside. 

It  was  the  brigade  major  who  asked  our  business.  He 
was  a  tall,  handsome  young  man  of  something  over 
thirty,  with  the  arrogance  of  a  Christ  Church  blood. 

"Oh,  he  has  come  out  to  see  something  in  Vermelles? 
A  pleasant  place  for  sightseeing!  Meanwhile  the  Hun  is 
ranging  on  this  house,  so  he  may  see  more  than  he  wants." 

He  turned  on  his  heel  and  rejoined  his  group.  They  all 
stared  in  my  direction  as  though  at  a  curious  animal. 
A  very  young  gentleman — the  general's  A.  D.  C. — made  a 
funny  remark  at  my  expense  and  the  others  laughed. 
Then  they  ignored  me,  and  I  was  glad,  and  made  a  little 
Study  in  the  psychology  of  men  awaiting  a  close  call  of 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  17 

death.  I  was  perfectly  conscious  myself  that  in  a  mo- 
ment or  two  some  of  us,  perhaps  all  of  us,  might  be  in  a 
pulp  of  mangled  flesh  beneath  the  ruins  of  a  red-brick 
villa — the  shells  were  crashing  among  the  outhouses  and 
in  the  courtyard,  and  the  enemy  was  making  good 
shooting — and  the  idea  did  not  please  me  at  all.  At  the 
back  of  my  brain  was  Fear,  and  there  was  a  cold  sweat 
in  the  palms  of  my  hands;  but  I  was  master  of  myself, 
and  I  remember  having  a  sense  of  satisfaction  because  I 
had  answered  the  brigade  major  in  a  level  voice,  with  a 
touch  of  his  own  arrogance.  I  saw  that  these  ofl&cers 
were  afraid;  that  they,  too,  had  Fear  at  the  back  of  the 
brain,  and  that  their  conversation  and  laughter  were  the 
camouflage  of  the  soul.  The  face  of  the  young  A.  D.  C. 
was  flushed  and  he  laughed  too  much  at  his  own  jokes, 
and  his  laughter  was  just  a  tone  too  shrill.  An  oflacer 
came  into  the  hall,  carrying  two  Mills  bombs — new  toys 
in  those  days — and  the  others  fell  back  from  him,  and 
one  said: 

''For  Christ's  sake  don't  bring  them  here — in  the  middle 
of  a  bombardment!" 

"Where's  the  general?"  asked  the  newcomer. 

"Down  in  the  cellar  with  the  other  brigadier.  They 
don't  ask  us  down  to  tea,  I  notice." 

Those  last  words  caused  all  the  oflScers  to  laugh — 
almost  excessively.  But  their  laughter  ended  sharply, 
and  they  listened  intently  as  there  was  a  heavy  craih 
outside. 

Another  officer  cam.e  up  the  steps  and  made  a  rapid 
entry  into  the  hall. 

"I  understand  there  is  to  be  a  conference  of  battalion 
commanders,"  he  said,  with  a  queer  catch  in  his  breath. 
"In  view  of  this — er — bombardment,  I  had  better  come 
in  later,  perhaps?" 

"You  had  better  wait,"  said  the  brigade  major,  rather 
grimly. 

"Oh,  certainly." 

A  sergeant-major  was  pacing  up  and  down  the  passage 


i8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

by  the  back  door.  He  was  calm  and  stolid.  I  liked  the 
look  of  him  and  found  something  comforting  in  his 
presence,  so  that  I  went  to  have  a  few  words  with  him. 

"How  long  is  this  likely  to  last,  Sergeant-major?" 

"There's  no  saying,  sir.  They  may  be  searching  for 
the  chateau  to  pass  the  time,  so  to  speak,  or  they  may  go 
on  till  they  get  it.  I'm  sorry  they  caught  those  gunners. 
Nice  lads,   both  of  them." 

He  did  not  seem  to  be  worrying  about  his  own  chance. 

Then  suddenly  there  was  silence.  The  German  guns 
had  switched  off.  I  heard  the  larks  singing  through  the 
open  doorv/ay,  and  all  the  little  sounds  of  a  summer  day. 
The  group  of  officers  in  the  hall  started  chatting  more 
quietly.  There  was  no  more  need  of  finding  jokes  and 
laughter.  They  had  been  reprieved,  and  could  be 
serious. 

"We'd  better  get  forward  to  Vermelles,"  said  my 
companion. 

As  we  walked  away  from  the  chateau,  the  brigade 
major  passed  us  on  his  horse.  He  leaned  over  his  saddle 
toward  me  and  said,  "Good  day  to  you,  and  I  hope  you'll 
like  Vermelles." 

The  words  were  civil,  but  there  was  an  underlying 
meaning  in  them. 

"I  hope  to  do  so,  sir." 

We  walked  down  the  long  straight  road  toward  the 
ruins  of  Vermelles  with  a  young  soldier-guide  who  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  village  remarked  in  a  casual  way: 

"No  one  is  allowed  along  this  road  in  daylight,  as  a 
rule.     It's  under  hobservation  of  the  henemy." 

"Then  why  the  devil  did  you  come  this  way?"  asked 
my  companion. 

"I  thought  you  might  prefer  the  short  cut,  sir." 

We  explored  the  ruins  of  Vermelles,  where  many  young 
Frenchmen  had  fallen  in  fighting  through  the  walls  and 
gardens.  One  could  see  the  track  of  their  strife,  in  tram- 
pled bushes  and  broken  walls.  Bits  of  red  rag — the  red 
pantaloons  of  the  first  French  soldiers — ^were  still  fastened 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  19 

to  brambles  and  barbed  wire.  Broken  rifles,  cartouches, 
water-bottles,  torn  letters,  twisted  bayonets,  and  German 
stick-bombs  littered  the  ditches  which  had  been  dug  as 
trenches  across  streets  of  burned-out  houses. 


A  young  gunner  officer  whom  we  met  was  very  civil, 
and  stopped  in  front  of  the  chateau  of  Vermelles,  a  big 
red  villa  with  the  outer  walls  still  standing,  and  told- us 
the  story  of  its  capture. 

"It  was  a  wild  scrap.  I  was  told  all  about  it  by  a 
French  sergeant  who  was  in  it.  They  were  under  the 
cover  of  that  wall  over  there,  about  a  hundred  yards 
away,  and  fixing  up  a  charge  of  high  explosives  to  knock 
a  breach  in  the  wall.  The  chateau  was  a  machine-gun 
fortress,  with  the  Germans  on  the  top  floor,  the  ground 
floor,  and  in  the  basement,  protected  by  sand-bags, 
through  which  they  fired.  A"  German  officer  made  a 
bad  mistake.  He  opened  the  front  door  and  came  out 
with  some  of  his  machine-gunners  from  the  ground  floor 
to  hold  a  trench  across  the  square  in  front  of  the  house. 
Instantly  a  French  lieutenant  called  to  his  men.  They 
climbed  over  the  wall  and  made  a  dash  for  the  chateau, 
bayoneting  the  Germans  who  tried  to  stop  them.  Then 
they  swarmed  into  the  chateau — a  platoon'of  them  with 
the  lieutenant.  They  were  in  the  drawing-room,  quite 
an  elegant  place,  you  know,  with  the  usual  gilt  furniture 
and  long  mirrors.  In  one  corner  was  a  pedestal,  with  a 
statue  of  Venus  standing  on  it.  Rather  charming,  I 
expect.  A  few  Germans  were  killed  in  the  room,  easily. 
But  upstairs  there  was  a  mob  who  fired  down  through  the 
ceiling  when  they  found  what  had  happened.  The  French 
soldiers  prodded  the  ceiling  with  their  bayonets,  and  all 
the  plaster  broke,  falling  on  them.  A  German,  fat  and 
heavy,  fell  half-way  through  the  rafters,  and  a  bayonet 
was  poked  into  him  as  he  stuck  there.  The  whole  ceiling 
gave  way,  and  the  Germans  upstairs  came  dov/nstairs,  in 


20  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

a  heap.  They  fought  Hke  wolves — wild  beasts — with  fear 
and  rage.  French  and  Germans  clawed  at  one  another's 
throats,  grabbed  hold  of  noses,  rolled  over  each  other. 
The  French  sergeant  told  me  he  had  his  teeth  into  a 
German's  neck.  The  man  was  all  over  him,  pinning  his 
arms,  trying  to  choke  him.  It  was  the  French  lieutenant 
who  did  most  damage.  He  fired  his  last  shot  and  smashed 
a  German's  face  with  his  empty  revolver.  Then  he 
caught  hold  of  the  marble  Venus  by  the  legs  and  swung 
it  above  his  head,  in  the  old  Berserker  style,  and  laid  out 
Germans  like  ninepins.  .  .  .  The  fellows  in  the  basement 
surrendered."  % 

VI 

The  chateau  of  Vermelles,  where  that  had  happened, 
was  an  empty  ruin,  and  there  was  no  sign  of  the  gilt 
furniture,  or  the  long  mirrors,  or  the  marble  Venus  when 
I  looked  through  the  charred  window-frames  upon  piles 
of  bricks  and  timber  churned  up  by  shell-fire.  The 
gunner  officer  took  us  to  the  cemetery,  to  meet  some 
friends  of  his  who  had  their  battery  nearby.  We  stum- 
bled over  broken  walls  and  pushed  through  undergrow^th 
to  get  to  the  graveyard,  where  some  broken  crosses  and 
wire  frames  with  immortelles  remained  as  relics  of  that 
garden  where  the  people  of  Vermelles  had  laid  their  dead 
to  rest.  New  dead  had  followed  old  dead.  I  stumbled 
over  something  soft,  like  a  ball  of  clay,  and  saw  that  it 
was  the  head  of  a  faceless  man,  in  a  battered  kepi.  From 
a  ditch  close  by  came  a  sickly  stench  of  half-buried  flesh. 

"The  whole  place  is  a  pest-house,"  said  the  gunner. 

Another  voice  spoke  from  some  hiding-place. 

"Salvo!" 

The  earth  shook  and  there  was  a  flash  of  red  flame,  and 
a  shock  of  noise  which  hurt  one's  ear-drums. 

"That's  my  battery,"  said  the  gunner  officer.  "It's 
the  very  devil  when  one  doesn't  expect  it." 

I  was  introduced  to  the  gentleman  who  had  said 
"Salvo!"     He  was   the  gunner-major,    and   a   charming 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  21 

fellow,  recently  from  civil  life.  All  the  battery  was 
made  up  of  New  Army  men  learning  their  job,  and  learning 
it  very  well,  I  should  say.  There  was  no  arrogance 
about  them. 

"It's  sporting  of  you  to  come  along  to  a  spot  like  this," 
said  one  of  them.  "I  wouldn't  unless  I  had  to.  Of 
course  you'll  take  tea  in  our  mess?" 

I  was  glad  to  take  tea — in  a  little  house  at  the  end  of 
the  ruined  high-street  of  Vermelles  which  had  by  some 
miracle  escaped  destruction,  though  a  shell  had  pierced 
through  the  brick  wall  of  the  parlor  and  had  failed  to 
burst.  It  was  there  still,  firmly  wedged,  like  a  huge  nail. 
The  tea  was  good,  in  tin  mugs.  Better  still  was  the  com- 
pany of  the  gunner  officers.  They  told  me  how  often 
they  were  "scared  stiff."  They  had  been  very  frightened 
an  hour  before  I  came,  when  the  German  gunners  had 
ranged  up  and  down  the  street,  smashing  up  ruined 
houses  into  greater  ruin. 

"They're  so  methodical!"  said  one  of  the  officers. 

"Wonderful  shooting!"  said  another. 

"I  will  say  they're  topping  gunners,"  said  the  major. 
"But  we're  learning;  my  men  are  very  keen.  Put  in  a 
good  word  for  the  new  artillery.  It  would  buck  them  up 
no  end." 

We  went  back  before  sunset,  down  the  long  straight 
road,  and  past  the  chateau  which  we  had  visited  in  the 
afternoon.  It  looked  very  peaceful  there  among  the 
trees. 

It  is  curious  that  I  remember  the  details  of  that  day 
so  vividly,  as  though  they  happened  yesterday.  On 
hundreds  of  other  days  I  had  adventures  like  that,  which 
I  remember  more  dimly. 

"That  brigade  major  was  a  trifle  haughty,  don't  you 
think?"  said  my  companion.  "And  the  others  didn't 
seem  very  friendly.     Not  like  those  gunner  boys." 

"We  called  at  an  awkward  time.  They  were  rather 
fussed." 

"One  expects  good  manners,     Especially  from  Regular^ 


i2  NOW  IT  CAN  }3E  TOLD 

who  pride  themselves  on  being  different  in  that  way  from 
the  New  Army." 

"It's  the  difference  between  the  professional  and  the 
amateur  soldier.  The  Regular  crowd  think  the  war 
belongs  to  them.  .  .  .  But  I  liked  their  pluck.  They're 
arrogant  to  Death  himself  when  he  comes  knocking  at 
the  door." 

VII 

It  was  not  long  before  we  broke  down  the  prejudice 
against  us  among  the  fighting  units.  The  new  armies 
were  our  friends  from  the  first,  and  liked  us  to  visit  them 
in  their  trenches  and  their  dugouts,  their  camps  and 
their  billets.  Every  young  officer  was  keen  to  show  us  his 
particular  "peep-show"  or  to  tell  us  his  latest  "stunt." 
We  made  many  friends  among  them,  and  it  was  our  grief 
that  as  the  war  went  on  so  many  of  them  disappeared 
from  their  battalions,  and  old  faces  were  replaced  by  new 
faces,  and  those  again  by  others  when  they  had  become 
familiar.  Again  and  again,  after  battle,  twenty-two 
officers  in  a  battalion  mess  were  reduced  to  two  or  three, 
and  the  gaps  were  filled  up  from  the  reserve  depots.  I 
was  afraid  to  ask,  "Where  is  So-and-so?"  because  I  knew 
that  the  best  answer  would  be,  "A  Blighty  wound,"  and 
the  worst  was  more  hkely. 

It  was  the  duration  of  all  the  drama  of  death  that 
seared  one's  soul  as  an  onlooker;  the  frightful  sum  of 
sacrifice  that  we  were  recording  day  by  day.  There 
were  times  when  it  became  intolerable  and  agonizing,  and 
when  I  at  least  desired  peace-at-almost-any-price,  peace 
by  negotiation,  by  compromise,  that  the  river  of  blood 
might  cease  to  flow.  The  men  looked  so  splendid  as 
they  marched  up  to  the  lines,  singing,  whistling,  with  an 
easy  swing.  They  looked  so  different  when  thousands 
came  down  again,  to  field  dressing-stations — the  walking 
wounded  and  the  stretcher  cases,  the  blind  and  the 
gassed — as  we  saw  them  on  the  mornings  of  battle,  month 
after  month,  year  after  year. 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  23 

Our  work  as  chroniclers  of  their  acts  was  not  altogether 
**soft,"  though  we  did  not  go  "over  the  top"  or  live  in  the 
dirty  ditches  with  them.  We  had  to  travel  prodigiously 
to  cover  the  ground  between  one  division  and  another  j 
along  a  hundred  miles  of  front,  with  long  walks  often  ati 
the  journey's  end  and  a  wet  way  back.  Sometimes  we 
were  soaked  to  the  skin  on  the  journey  home.  Often  we 
were  so  cold  and  numbed  in  those  long  wild  drives  up 
desolate  roads  that  our  limbs  lost  consciousness  and  the 
wind  cut  into  us  like  knives.  We  were  working  against 
time,  always  against  time,  and  another  tire-burst  would 
mean  that  no  despatch  could  be  written  of  a  great  battle 
on  the  British  front,  or  only  a  short  record  written  in  the 
wildest  haste  when  there  was  so  much  to  tell,  so  much  to 
describe,  such  unforgetable  pictures  in  one's  brain  of 
another  day's  impressions  in  the  fields  and  on  the  roads. 

There  were  five  English  correspondents  and,  two  years 
later,  two  Americans.  On  mornings  of  big  battle  we  di- 
vided up  the  line  of  front  and  drew  lots  for  the  particular 
section  which  each  man  would  cover.  Then  before  the 
dawn,  or  in  the  murk  of  winter  mornings,  or  the  first 
glimmer  of  a  summer  day,  our  cars  would  pull  out  and 
we  would  go  off  separately  to  the  part  of  the  line  allotted 
to  us  by  the  number  drawn,  to  see  the  preliminary  bom- 
bardment, to  walk  over  newly  captured  ground,  to  get 
into  the  backwash  of  prisoners  and  walking  wounded, 
amid  batteries  firing  a  new  barrage,  guns  moving  forward 
on  days  of  good  advance,  artillery  transport  bringing  up 
new  stores  of  ammunition,  troops  in  support  marching  to 
repel  a  counter-attack  or  follow  through  the  new  ob- 
jectives, ambulances  threading  their  way  back  through 
the  traffic,  with  loads  of  prostrate  men,  mules,  gun- 
horses,  lorries  churning  up  the  mud  in  Flanders. 

So  we  gained  a  personal  view  of  all  this  activity  of 
strife,  and  from  many  men  in  its  whirlpool  details  of  their 
own  adventure  and  of  general  progress  or  disaster  on  one 
sector  of  the  battle-front.  Then  in  divisional  headquarters 
we  saw  the  reports  of  the  battle  as  they  came  in  by  tele- 


24  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

phone,  or  aircraft,  or  pigeon-post,  from  half-hour  to  half- 
hour,  or  ten  minutes  by  ten  minutes.  Three  divisions 
widely  separated  provided  all  the  work  one  war  cor- 
respondent could  do  on  one  day  of  action,  and  later  news, 
on  a  broader  scale,  could  be  obtained  from  corps  head- 
quarters farther  back.  Tired,  hungry,  nerve-racked, 
splashed  to  the  eyes  in  mud,  or  covered  in  a  mask  of  dust, 
we  started  for  the  journey  back  to  our  own  quarters, 
which  we  shifted  from  time  to  time  in  order  to  get  as  near 
as  we  could  to  the  latest  battle-front  without  getting 
beyond  reach  of  the  telegraph  instruments — by  relays  of 
despatch-riders — at  ''Signals,"  G.  H.  Q.,  which  remained 
immovably  fixed  in  the  rear. 

There  was  a  rendezvous  in  one  of  our  rooms,  and  each 
man  outlined  the  historical  narrative  of  the  day  upon  the 
front  he  had  covered,  reserving  for  himself  his  own 
adventures,  impressions,  and  emotions. 

Time  slipped  away,  and  time  was  short,  while  the 
despatch-riders  waited  for  our  unwritten  despatches,  and 
censors  who  had  been  our  fellow-travelers  washed  them- 
selves cleaner  and  kept  an  eye  on  the  clock. 

Time  was  short  while  the  world  waited  for  our  tales  of 
tragedy  or  victory  .  .  .  and  tempers  were  frayed,  and 
nerves  on  edge,  among  five  men  who  hated  one  another, 
sometimes,  with  a  murderous  hatred  (though,  otherwise, 
good  comrades)  and  desired  one  another's  death  by  slow 
torture  or  poison-gas  when  they  fumbled  over  notes, 
written  in  a  jolting  car,  or  on  a  battlefield  walk,  and 
went  into  past  history  in  order  to  explain  present  hap- 
penings, or  became  tangled  in  the  numbers  of  battalions 
and  divisions. 

Percival  PhilHps  turned  pink-and-white  under  the 
hideous  strain  of  nervous  control,  with  an  hour  and  a  half 
for  two  columns  in  The  Morning  Post.  A  little  pulse 
throbbed  in  his  forehead.  His  lips  were  tightly  pressed. 
His  oaths  and  his  anguish  were  in  his  soul,  but  unuttered. 
Beach  Thomas,  the  most  amiable  of  men,  the  Peter  Pan 
who  went  a  bird-nesting  on  battlefields,  a  lover  of  beauty 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  25' 

and  games  and  old  poems  and  Greek  and  Latm  tags,  and 
all  joy  in  life — what  had  he  to  do  with  war? — looked  bored 
with  an  infinite  boredom,  irritable  with  a  scornful  im- 
patience of  unnecessary  detail,  gazed  through  his  gold- 
rimmed  spectacles  with  an  air  of  extreme  detachment 
(when  Percy  Robinson  rebuilt  the  map  with  dabs  and 
dashes  on  a  blank  sheet  of  paper),  and  said,  "I've  got 
more  than  I  can  write,  and  The  Daily  Mail  goes  early 
to  press." 

"Thanks  very  much.  .  .  .  It's  very  kind  of  you.'* 

We  gathered  up  our  note-books  and  were  punctiliously 
polite.  (Afterward  we  were  the  best  of  friends.)  Thomas 
was  first  out  of  the  room,  with  short,  quick  little  steps  in 
spite  of  his  long  legs.  His  door  banged.  Phillips  was 
first  at  his  typewriter,  working  it  like  a  machine-gun,  in 
short,  furious  spasms  of  word-fire.  I  sat  down  to  my 
typewriter — a  new  instrument  of  torture  to  me — and 
coaxed  its  evil  genius  with  conciliatory  prayers. 

"For  dear  God's  sake,"  I  said,  "don't  go  twisting  that 
blasted  ribbon  of  yours  to-day.  I  must  write  this 
despatch,  and  I've  just  an  hour  when  I  want  five." 

Sometimes  that  Corona  was  a  mechanism  of  singular 
sweetness,  and  I  blessed  it  with  a  benediction.  But 
often  there  was  a  devil  in  it  which  mocked  at  me.  After 
the  first  sentence  or  two  it  twisted  the  ribbon;  at  the 
end  of  twenty  sentences  the  ribbon  was  like  an  angry 
snake,  writhing  and  coiling  hideously. 

I  shouted  for  Mackenzie,  the  American,  a  master  of 
these  things. 

He  came  in  and  saw  my  blanched  face,  my  sweat  of 
anguish,  my  crise  de  nerfs.  I  could  see  by  his  eyes  that 
he  understood  my  stress  and  had  pity  on  me. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  said.     "A  little  patience — " 

By  a  touch  or  two  he  exorcised  the  devil,  laughed,  and 
said:  "Go  easy.  You've  just  about  reached  breaking- 
point." 

I  wrote,  as  we  all  wrote,  fast  and  furiously,  to  get  down 
something  of  enormous  history,  word-pictures  of  things 


26  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

seen,  heroic  anecdotes,  the  underlying  meaning  of  this 
new  slaughter.  There  was  never  time  to  think  out  a 
sentence  or  a  phrase,  to  touch  up  a  clumsy  paragraph,  to 
go  back  on  a  false  start,  to  annihilate  a  vulgar  adjective, 
to  put  a  touch  of  style  into  one's  narrative.  One  wrote 
instinctively,  blindly,  feverishly.  .  .  .  And  downstairs 
were  the  censors,  sending  up  messages  by  orderlies  to  say 
"half-time,"  or  "ten  minutes  more,"  and  cutting  out 
sometimes  the  things  one  wanted  most  to  say,  modifying 
a  direct  statement  of  fact  into  a  vague  surmise,  taking 
away  the  honor  due  to  the  heroic  men  who  had  fought 
and  died  to-day.  .  .  .  Who  would  be  a  war  correspondent, 
or  a  censor? 

So  it  happened  day  by  day,  for  five  months  at  a  stretch, 
when  big  battles  were  in  progress.  It  was  not  an  easy 
life.  There  were  times  when  I  was  so  physically  and 
mentally  exhausted  that  I  could  hardly  rouse  myself  to  a 
new  day's  effort.  There  were  times  when  I  was  faint  and 
sick  and  weak;  and  my  colleagues  were  like  me.  But 
we  struggled  on  to  tell  the  daily  history  of  the  war  and 
the  public  cursed  us  because  we  did  not  tell  more,  or 
sneered  at  us  because  they  thought  we  were  "spoon-fed'* 
by  G.  H.  Q. — who  never  gave  us  any  news  and  who  were 
far  from  our  way  of  life,  except  when  they  thwarted  us, 
by  petty  restrictions  and  foohsh  rules. 

VIII 

The  Commander-in-Chief — Sir  John  French — received 
us  when  we  were  first  attached  to  the  British  armies  in 
the  field — a  lifetime  ago,  as  it  seems  to  me  now.  It  was 
a  formal  ceremony  in  the  chateau  near  St.-Omer,  which 
he  used  as  his  own  headquarters,  with  his  A.  D.  C.'s  in 
attendance,  though  the  main  general  headquarters  were 
in  the  town.  Our  first  colonel  gathered  us  like  a  shep- 
herd with  his  flock,  counting  us  twice  over  before  we 
passed  in.  A  tall,  dark  young  man,  whom  I  knew  after- 
ward to  be  Sir  Philip  Sassoon,  received  us  and  chatted 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  27 

pleasantly  in  a  French  salon  with  folding-doors  which 
shut  off  an  inner  room.  There  were  a  few  portraits  of 
ladies  and  gentlemen  of  France  in  the  days  before  the 
Revolution,  like  those  belonging  to  that  old  aristocracy 
which  still  existed,  in  poverty  and  pride,  in  other  chateaus 
in  this  French  Flanders.  There  was  a  bouquet  of  flowers 
on  the  table,  giving  a  sweet  scent  to  the  room,  and  sunlight 
streamed  through  the  shutters.  ...  I  thought  for  a 
moment  of  the  men  living  in  ditches  in  the  salient,  under 
harassing  fire  by  day  and  night.  Their  actions  and  their 
encounters  with  death  were  being  arranged,  without  their 
knowledge,  in  this  sunny  little  chateau.  .  .  . 

The  folding-doors  opened  and  Sir  John  French  came 
in.  He  wore  top-boots  and  spurs,  and  after  saying,  "Good 
day,  gentlemen,"  stood  with  his  legs  apart,  a  stocky,  sol- 
dierly figure,  with  a  square  head  and  heavy  jaw.  I 
wondered  whether  there  were  any  light  of  genius  in  him — 
any  inspiration,  any  force  which  would  break  the  awful 
strength  of  the  enemy  against  us,  any  cunning  in  modern 
warfare. 

He  coughed  a  little,  and  made  us  a  speech.  I  forget 
his  words,  but  remember  the  gist  of  them.  He  was 
pleased  to  welcome  us  within  his  army,  and  trusted  to  our 
honor  and  loyalty.  He  made  an  allusion  to  the  power  of 
the  press,  and  promised  us  facilities  for  seeing  and  writing, 
within  the  bounds  of  censorship.  I  noticed  that  he  pro- 
nounced St.-Omer,  St. -Omar,  as  though  Omar  Khayyam 
had  been  canonized.  He  said,  "Good  day,  gentlemen," 
again,  and  coughed  huskily  again  to  clear  his  throat,  and 
then  went  back  through  the  folding-doors. 

I  saw  him  later,  during  the  battle  of  Loos,  after  its 
ghastly  failure.  He  was  riding  a  white  horse  in  the  vil- 
lages of  Heuchin  and  Houdain,  through  which  lightly 
wounded  Scots  of  the  ist  and  15th  Divisions  were  making 
their  way  back.  He  leaned  over  his  saddle,  questioning 
the  men  and  thanking  them  for  their  gallantry.  I 
thought  he  looked  grayer  and  older  than  when  he  had 
addressed  us. 


28  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"Who  mun  that  old  geezer  be,  Jock?"  asked  a  High- 
lander when  he  had  passed. 

"I  dinna  ken,"  said  the  other  Scot.     "An'  I  dinna  care." 

"It's  the  Commander-in-Chief,"  I  said.  "Sir  John 
French.'" 

"  Eh .? "  said  the  younger  man,  of  the  8th  Gordons.  He 
did  not  seem  thrilled  by  the  knowledge  I  had  given  him, 
but  turned  his  head  and  stared  after  the  figure  on  the 
v/hite  horse.  Then  he  said:  "Well,  he's  made  a  mess  o' 
the  battle.  We  could  've  held  Hill  70  against  all  the 
di'els  o'  hell  if  there  had  bin  supports  behind  us." 

"Ay,"  said  his  comrade,  " an'  there's  few  o'  the  laddies  '11 
come  back  fra  Cite  St.-Auguste." 

IX 

It  was  another  commander-in-chief  who  received  us 
some  months  after  the  battle  of  Loos,  in  a  chateau  near 
Montreuil,  to  which  G.  H.  Q.  had  then  removed.  Our 
only  knowledge  of  Sir  Douglas  Haig  before  that  day  was 
of  a  hostile  influence  against  us  in  the  First  Army,  which 
he  commanded.  He  had  drawn  a  line  through  his  area 
beyond  which  we  might  not  pass.  He  did  not  desire  our 
presence  among  his  troops  nor  in  his  neighborhood. 
That  line  had  been  broken  by  the  protests  of  our  com- 
mandant, and  now  as  Commander-in-Chief,  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  had  realized  dimly  that  he  might  be  helped  by  our 
services. 

It  was  in  another  French  salon  that  we  waited  for  the 
man  who  controlled  the  British  armies  in  the  field — 
those  armies  which  we  now  knew  in  some  intimacy,  whom 
we  had  seen  in  the  front-line  trenches  and  rest-camps  and 
billets,  hearing  their  point  of  view,  knowing  their  suffering 
and  their  patience,  and  their  impatience — and  their 
deadly  hatred  of  G.  H.  Q. 

He  was  very  handsome  as  he  sat  behind  a  Louis  XIV 
table,  with  General  Charteris — his  Chief  of  Intelligence, 
who  was  our  chief,   too — behind   him   at  one  side,   for 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  29 

prompting  and  advice.     He  received  us  with  line  courtesy 
and  said: 

"Pray  be  seated,  gentlemen." 

There  had  been  many  troubles  over  censorship,  of 
which  he  knew  but  vaguely  through  General  Charteris, 
who  looked  upon  us  as  his  special  "cross."  We  had 
fought  hard  for  liberty  in  mentioning  units,  to  give  the 
honor  to  the  troops,  and  for  other  concessions  which 
would  free  our  pens. 

The  Commander-in-Chief  was  sympathetic,  but  his 
sympathy  was  expressed  in  words  which  revealed  a  com- 
plete misunderstanding  of  our  purpose  and  of  our  work, 
and  was  indeed  no  less  than  an  insult,  unconscious  but 
very  hurtful. 

"I  think  I  understand  fairly  well  what  you  gentlemen 
want,"  he  said.  "You  want  to  get  hold  of  httle  stories  of 
heroism,  and  so  forth,  and  to  write  them  up  in  a  bright 
way  to  make  good  reading  for  Mary  Ann  in  the  kitchen,!, 
and  the  Man  in  the  Street."  The  quiet  passion  with 
which  those  words  were  resented  by  us,  the  quick  repudi- 
ation of  this  slur  upon  our  purpose  by  a  charming  man, 
perfectly  ignorant  at  that  time  of  the  new  psychology  of 
nations  in  a  war  which  was  no  longer  a  professional  ad- 
venture, surprised  him.  We  took  occasion  to  point  out 
to  him  that  the  British  Empire,  which  had  sent  its  men 
into  this  war,  yearned  to  know  what  they  were  doing  and 
how  they  were  doing,  and  that  their  patience  and  loyalty 
depended  upon  closer  knowledge  of  what  was  happening 
than  was  told  them  in  the  communiques  issued  by  the 
Commander-in-Chief  himself.  We  urged  him  to  let  us 
mention  more  frequently  the  names  of  the  troops  engaged 
— especially  English  troops — for  the  sake  of  the  soldiers 
themselves,  who  were  discouraged  by  this  lack  of  recog- 
nition, and  for  the  sake  of  the  people  behind  them.  .  .  . 
It  was  to  the  pressure  of  the  war  correspondents,  very 
largely,  that  the  troops  owed  the  mention  and  world-wide 
honor  which  came  to  them,  more  generously,  in  the  later 
phases  of  the  war. 


30  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

The  Commander-in-Chief  made  a  note  of  our  griev* 
ances,  turning  now  and  again  to  General  Charteris,  who 
was  extremely  nervous  at  our  frankness  of  speech,  and 
telling  him  to  relax  the  rules  of  censorship  as  far  as  pos- 
sible. That  was  done,  and  in  later  stages  of  the  war  I 
personally  had  no  great  complaint  against  the  censorship, 
and  wrote  all  that  was  possible  to  write  of  the  actions  day 
by  day,  though  I  had  to  leave  out  something  of  the  under- 
lying horror  of  them  all,  in  spite  of  my  continual  emphasis, 
by  temperament  and  by  conviction,  on  the  tragedy  of  all 
this  sacrifice  of  youth.  The  only  alternative  to  what  we 
wrote  would  have  been  a  passionate  denunciation  of  all 
this  ghastly  slaughter  and  violent  attacks  on  British 
generalship.  Even  now  I  do  not  think  that  would  have 
been  justified.  As  Bernard  Shaw  told  me,  "while  the  war 
lasts  one  must  put  one's  own  soul  under  censorship." 

After  many  bloody  battles  had  been  fought  we  were 
received  again  by  the  Commander-in-Chief,  and  this  time 
his  cordiality  was  not  marred  by  any  slighting  touch. 

''Gentlemen,"  he  said,  ''you  have  played  the  game  like 
men! 

When  victory  came  at  last — at  last! — after  the  years 
of  slaughter,  it  was  the  little  band  of  war  correspondents 
on  the  British  front,  our  foreign  comrades  included,  whom 
the  Field-Marshal  addressed  on  his  first  visit  to  the  Rhine. 
We  stood  on  the  Hohenzollern  Bridge  in  Cologne,  watched 
by  groups  of  Germans  peering  through  the  escort  of 
Lancers.  It  was  a  dank  and  foul  day,  but  to  us  beautiful, 
because  this  was  the  end  of  the  long  journey — four-and- 
a-half  years  long,  which  had  been  filled  with  slaughter  all 
the  way,  so  that  we  were  tired  of  its  backwash  of  agony, 
which  had  overwhelmed  our  souls — mine,  certainly.  The 
Commander-in-Chief  read  out  a  speech  to  us,  thanking 
us  for  our  services,  which,  he  said,  had  helped  him  to 
victory,  because  we  had  heartened  the  troops  and  the 
people  by  our  work.  It  was  a  recognition  by  the  leader 
of  our  armies  that,  as  chroniclers  of  war,  we  had  been  a 
spiritual  force  behind   his   arms.     It  was   a   reward   for 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  31 

many  mournful  days,  for  much  agony  of  spirit,  for  hours 
of  danger — some  of  us  had  walked  often  in  the  ways  of 
death — and  for  exhausting  labors  which  we  did  so  that 
the  world  might  know  what  British  soldiers  had  been 
doing  and  suffering. 


I  came  to  know  General  Headquarters  more  closely 
when  it  removed,  for  fresher  air,  to  Montreuil,  a  fine  old 
walled  town,  once  within  sight  of  the  sea,  which  ebbed 
over  the  low-lying  ground  below  its  hill,  but  now  looking 
across  a  wide  vista  of  richly  cultivated  fields  where  many 
hamlets  are  scattered  among  clumps  of  trees.  One  came 
to  G.  H.  Q.  from  journeys  over  the  wild  desert  of  the 
battlefields,  where  men  lived  in  ditches  and  ** pill-boxes," 
muddy,  miserable  in  all  things  but  spirit,  as  to  a  place 
where  the  pageantry  of  war  still  maintained  its  old  and 
dead  tradition.  It  was  like  one  of  those  pageants  which 
used  to  be  played  in  England  before  the  war — ^picturesque, 
romantic,  utterly  unreal.  It  was  as  though  men  were 
playing  at  war  here,  while  others  sixty  miles  away  were 
fighting  and  dying,  in  mud  and  gas-waves  and  explosive 
barrages. 

An  "open  sesame,"  oy  means  of  a  special  pass,  was 
needed  to  enter  this  City  of  Beautiful  Nonsense.  Below 
the  gateway,  up  the  steep  hillside,  sentries  stood  at  a 
white  post  across  the  road,  which  lifted  up  on  pulleys 
when  the  pass  had  been  examined  by  a  military  policeman 
in  a  red  cap.  Then  the  sentries  slapped  their  hands  on 
their  rifles  to  the  occupants  of  any  motor-car,  sure  that 
more  staff-officers  were  going  in  to  perform  those  duties 
which  no  private  soldier  could  attempt  to  understand, 
believing  they  belonged  to  such  mysteries  as  those  of  God. 
Through  the  narrow  streets  walked  elderly  generals,  mid- 
dle-aged colonels  and  majors,  youthful  subalterns  all  wear- 
ing red  hat-bands,  red  tabs,  and  the  blue-and-red  armlet 
of  G.  H.  Q.,  so  that  color  went  with  them  on  their  way. 

Often  one  saw  the  Commander-in-Chief  starting  for  an 


32  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

afternoon  ride,  a  fine  figure,  nobly  mounted,  with  two 
A.  D.  C.'s  and  an  escort  of  Lancers.  A  pretty  sight,  with 
fluttering  pennons  on  all  their  lances,  and  horses  groomed 
to  the  last  hair.  It  was  prettier  than  the  real  thing  up 
in  the  salient  or  beyond  the  Somme,  where  dead  bodies 
lay  in  upheaved  earth  among  ruins  and  slaughtered  trees. 
War  at  Montreuil  was  quite  a  pleasant  occupation  for 
elderly  generals  who  liked  their  little  stroll  after  lunch, 
and  for  young  Regular  officers,  released  from  the  painful 
necessity  of  dying  for  their  country,  who  were  glad  to  get 
a  game  of  tennis,  down  below  the  walls  there,  after  stren- 
uous office-work  in  which  they  had  written  "Passed  to 
you"  on  many  "minutes,"  or  had  drawn  the  most  comical 
caricatures  of  their  immediate  chief,  and  of  his  immediate 
chief,  on  blotting-pads  and  writing-blocks. 

It  seemed,  at  a  mere  glance,  that  all  these  military  in- 
habitants of  G.  H.  Q.  were  great  and  glorious  soldiers. 
Some  of  the  youngest  of  them  had  a  row  of  decorations 
from  Montenegro,  Serbia,  Italy,  Rumania,  and  other 
states,  as  recognition  of  gallant  service  in  translating 
German  letters  (found  in  dugouts  by  the  fighting-men), 
or  arranging  for  visits  of  political  personages  to  the  back 
areas  of  war,  or  initiahng  requisitions  for  pink,  blue, 
green,  and  yellow  forms,  which  in  due  course  would  find 
their  way  to  battalion  adjutants  for  immediate  fiUing-up 
in  the  middle  of  an  action.  The  oldest  of  them,  those 
white-haired,  bronze-faced,  gray-eyed  generals  in  the  ad- 
ministrative side  of  war,  had  started  their  third  row  of 
ribbons  well  before  the  end  of  the  Somme  battles,  and 
had  flower-borders  on  their  breasts  by  the  time  the  mas- 
sacres had  been  accomplished  in  the  fields  of  Flanders. 
I  know  an  officer  who  was  awarded  the  D.  S.  O.  because 
he  had  hindered  the  work  of  war  correspondents  with  the 
zeal  of  a  hedge-sparrow  in  search  of  worms,  and  another 
who  was  the  best-decorated  man  in  the  army  because  he 
had  presided  over  a  visitors'  chateau  and  entertained 
Royalties,  Members  of  Parliament,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward, 
miners,    Japanese,    Russian    revolutionaries,    Portuguese 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  33 

ministers,  Harry  Lauder,  Swedes,  Danes,  Norwegians, 
clergymen,  Montenegrins,  and  the  Editor  of  John  Bull, 
at  the  government's  expense — and  I  am  bound  to  say  he 
deserved  them  all,  being  a  man  of  infinite  tact,  many  lan- 
guages, and  a  devastating  sense  of  humor.  There  was 
always  a  Charlie  Chaplin  film  between  moving  pictures 
of  the  battles  of  the  Somme.  He  brought  the  actualities 
of  war  to  the  visitors'  chateau  by  sentry-boxes  outside  the 
door,  a  toy  "tank"  in  the  front  garden,  and  a  collection 
of  war  trophies  in  the  hall.  He  spoke  to  High  Personages 
with  less  deference  than  he  showed  to  miners  from  Dur- 
ham and  Wales,  and  was  master  of  them  always,  ordering 
them  sternly  to  bed  at  ten  o'clock  (when  he  sat  down  to 
bridge  with  his  junior  officers),  and  with  strict  military 
discipline  insisting  upon  their  inspection  of  the  bakeries  at 
Boulogne,  and  boot-mending  factories  at  Calais,  as  part 
of  the  glory  of  war  which  they  had  come  out  for  to  see. 

So  it  was  that  there  were  brilliant  colors  in  the  streets 
of  Montreuil,  and  at  every  doorway  a  sentry  slapped  his 
hand  to  his  rifle,  with  smart  and  untiring  iteration,  as  the 
''brains"  of  the  army,  under  "brass  hats"  and  red  bands, 
went  hither  and  thither  in  the  town,  looking  stern,  as 
soldiers  of  grave  responsibility,  answering  salutes  absent- 
mindedly,  staring  haughtily  at  young  battalion  officers 
who  passed  through  Montreuil  and  looked  meekly  for  a 
chance  of  a  lorry-ride  to  Boulogne,  on  seven  days'  leave 
from  the  lines. 

The  smart  society  of  G.  H.  Q.  was  best  seen  at  the 
Officers'  Club  in  Montreuil,  at  dinner-time.  It  was  as 
much  like  musical  comedy  as  any  stage  setting  of  war  at 
the  Gaiety.  A  band  played  ragtime  and  Hght  music 
while  the  warriors  fed,  and  all  these  generals  and  staff- 
officers,  with  their  decorations  and  arm-bands  and  pol- 
ished buttons  and  crossed  swords,  were  waited  upon  by 
little  W.  A.  A.  C.'s  with  the  G.  H.  Q.  colors  tied  up  in 
bows  on  their  hair,  and  khaki  stockings  under  their  short 
skirts  and  fancy  aprons.  Such  a  chatter!  Such  bursts 
of  light-h.earted  laughter  1     Such  whisperings  of  secrets 


34  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

and  intrigues  and  scandals  in  high  places!  Such  careless- 
hearted  courage  when  British  soldiers  were  being  blown 
to  bits,  gassed,  blinded,  maimed,  and  shell-shocked  in 
places  that  were  far — so  very  far — from  G.  H.  Q. ! 

XI 

There  were  shrill  voices  one  morning  outside  the  gate 
of  our  quarters — women's  voices,  excited,  angry,  passion- 
ate. An  orderly  came  into  the  mess — we  were  at  break- 
fast— and  explained  the  meaning  of  the  clamor,  which  by 
some  intuition  and  a  quick  ear  for  French  he  had  gathered 
from  all  this  confusion  of  tongues. 

"There's  a  soldier  up  the  road,  drunk  or  mad.  He  has 
been  attacking  a  girl.  The  villagers  want  an  officer  to 
arrest  him." 

The  colonel  sliced  off  the  top  of  his  egg  and  then  rose. 
"Tell  three  orderlies  to  follow  me." 

We  went  into  the  roadway,  and  twenty  women  crowded 
round  us  with  a  story  of  attempted  violence  against  an 
innocent  girl.  The  man  had  been  drinking  last  night  at 
the  estaminet  up  there.  Then  he  had  followed  the  girl, 
trying  to  make  love  to  her.  She  had  barricaded  herself 
in  the  room,  when  he  tried  to  climb  through  the  window. 

"If  you  don't  come  out  I'll  get  in  and  kill  you,"  he  said, 
according  to  the  women. 

But  she  had  kept  him  out,  though  he  prowled  round  all 
night.  Now  he  was  hiding  in  an  outhouse.  The  brute! 
The  pig! 

When  we  went  up  the  road  the  man  was  standing  in  the 
center  of  it,  with  a  sullen  look. 

"What's  the  trouble?"  he  asked.  "It  looks  as  if  all 
France  were  out  to  grab  me." 

He  glanced  sideways  over  the  field,  as  though  reckoning 
his  chance  of  escape.     There  was  no  chance. 

The  colonel  placed  him  under  arrest  and  he  marched 
back  between  the  orderlies,  with  an  old  soldier  of  the 
Contemptibles  behind  him. 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  35 

Later  in  the  day  he  was  Hned  up  for  identification  by 
the  girl,  among  a  crowd  of  other  men. 

The  girl  looked  down  the  line,  and  we  watched  her 
curiously — a  slim  creature  with  dark  hair  neatly  coiled. 

She  stretched  out  her  right  hand  with  a  pointing  finger. 

*'  Le  voild!  .  .  .  c'est  I'ho^nme." 

There  was  no  mistake  about  it,  and  the  man  looked 
sheepishly  at  her,  not  denying.  He  was  sent  off  under 
escort  to  the  military  prison  in  St.-Omer  for  court- 
martial. 

"What's  the  punishment — if  guilty?"  I  asked. 

**  Death,"  said  the  colonel,  resuming  his  egg. 

He  was  a  fine-looking  fellow,  the  prisoner.  He  had 
answered  the  call  for  king  and  country  without  delay. 
In  the  estaminety  after  coming  down  from  the  salient  for 
a  machine-gun  course,  he  had  drunk  more  beer  than  was 
good  for  him,  and  the  face  of  a  pretty  girl  had  bewitched 
him,  stirring  up  desire.  He  wanted  to  kiss  her  lips.  .  .  . 
There  were  no  women  in  the  Ypres  salient.  Nothing 
pretty  or  soft.  It  was  hell  up  there,  and  this  girl  was  a 
pretty  witch,  bringing  back  thoughts  of  the  other  side 
— for  life,  womanhood,  love,  caresses  which  were  good  for 
the  souls  and  bodies  of  men.  It  was  a  starved  life  up 
there  in  the  salient.  .  .  .  Why  shouldn't  she  give  him  her 
lips?  Wasn't  he  fighting  for  France?  Wasn't  he  a  tall 
and  proper  lad?  Curse  the  girl  for  being  so  sulky  to  an 
English  soldier!  .  .  .  And  now,  if  those  other  women,  those 
old  hags,  were  to  swear  against  him  things  he  had  never 
said,  things  he  had  never  done,  unless  drink  had  made 
him  forget — by  God!  supposing  drink  had  made  him  for- 
get.''— he  would  be  shot  against  a  white  wall.  Shot- 
dead — disgracefully,  shamefully,  by  his  own  comrades! 
O  Christ!  and  the  little  mother  in  a  Sussex  cottage!  .  .  . 

XII 

Going  up  to  Kemmel  one  day  I  had  to  wait  in  battalion 
headquarters  for  the  officer  I  had  gone  to  see.     He  was 


36  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

attending  a  court  martial.  Presently  he  came  into  the 
wooden  hut,  with  a  flushed  face. 

"Sorry  I  had  to  keep  you,"  he  said.  **To-morrow  there 
will  be  one  swine  less  in  the  world." 

"A  death  sentence.^*" 

He  nodded. 

**A  damned  coward.  Said  he  didn't  mind  rifle-fire,  but 
couldn't  stand  shells.  Admitted  he  left  his  post.  He 
doesn't  mind  rifle-fire!  .  .  .  Well,  to-morrow  morning — " 

The  ofl&cer  laughed  grimly,  and  then  listened  for  a 
second. 

There  were  some  heavy  crumps  falling  over  Kemmel 
Hill,  rather  close,  it  seemed,  to  our  wooden  hut. 

"Damn  those  German  gunners!"  said  the  officer. 
"Why  can't  they  give  us  a  little  peace?" 

He  turned  to  his  papers,  but  several  times  while  I  talked 
with  him  he  jerked  his  head  up  and  listened  to  a  heavy 
crash. 

On  the  way  back  I  saw  a  man  on  foot,  walking  in  front 
of  a  mounted  man,  past  the  old  hill  of  the  Scherpenberg, 
toward  the  village  of  Locre.  There  was  something  in 
the  way  he  walked,  in  his  attitude — the  head  hunched 
forward  a  little,  and  his  arms  behind  his  back — which 
made  me  turn  to  look  at  him.  He  was  manacled,  and 
tied  by  a  rope  to  the  mounted  man.  I  caught  one  glimpse 
of  his  face,  and  then  turned  away,  cold  and  sick.  There 
was  doom  written  on  his  face,  and  in  his  eyes  a  captured 
look.     He  was  walking  to  his  wall. 

XIII 

There  were  other  men  who  could  not  stand  shell-fire. 
It  filled  them  with  an  animal  terror  and  took  all  will-power 
out  of  them.  One  young  officer  was  like  that  man  who 
"did  not  mind  rifle-fire."  He,  by  some  strange  freak  of 
psychology,  was  brave  under  machine-gun  fire.  He  had 
done  several  gallant  things,  and  was  bright  and  cheerful 
in  the  trenches  until  the  enemy  barraged  them  with  high 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  37 

explosive.  Then  he  was  seen  wandering  back  to  the  sup- 
port trenches  in  a  dazed  way.  It  happened  three  times, 
and  he  was  sentenced  to  death.  Before  going  out  at 
dawn  to  face  the  firing-squad  he  was  calm.  There  was  a 
lighted  candle  on  the  table,  and  he  sorted  out  his  personal 
belongings  and  made  small  packages  of  them  as  keepsakes 
for  his  family  and  friends.  His  hand  did  not  tremble. 
When  his  time  came  he  put  out  the  candle,  between  thumb 
and  finger,  raised  his  hand,  and  said,  "Right  01'* 

Another  man,  shot  for  cowardice  in  face  of  the  enemy, 
was  sullen  and  silent  to  one  who  hoped  to  comfort  him  in 
the  last  hour.  The  chaplain  asked  him  whether  he  had 
any  message  for  his  relatives.  He  said,  "I  have  no 
relatives."  He  was  asked  whether  he  would  like  to  say 
any  prayers,  and  he  said,  "I  don't  believe  in  them."  The 
chaplain  talked  to  him,  but  could  get  no  answer — and 
time  was  creeping  on.  There  were  two  guards  in  the 
room,  sitting  motionless,  with  loaded  rifles  between  their 
knees.  Outside  it  was  silent  in  the  courtyard,  except  for 
little  noises  of  the  night  and  the  wind.  The  chaplain 
suffered,  and  was  torn  with  pity  for  that  sullen  man 
whose  life  was  almost  at  an  end.  He  took  out  his  hymn- 
book  and  said:  "I  will  sing  to  you.  It  will  pass  the  time." 
He  sang  a  hymn,  and  once  or  twice  his  voice  broke  a  little, 
but  he  steadied  it.  Then  the  man  said,  "I  will  sing  with 
you."  He  knew  all  the  hymns,  words  and  music.  It 
was  an  unusual,  astonishing  knowledge,  and  he  went  on 
singing,  hymn  after  hymn,  with  the  chaplain  by  his  side. 
It  was  the  chaplain  who  tired  first.  His  voice  cracked 
and  his  throat  became  parched.  Sweat  broke  out  on  his 
forehead,  because  of  the  nervous  strain.  But  the  man 
who  was  going  to  die  sang  on  in  a  clear,  hard  voice.  A 
faint  glimmer  of  coming  dawn  lightened  the  cottage  win- 
dow. There  were  not  many  minutes  more.  The  two 
guards  shifted  their  feet.  "Now,"  said  the  man,  "we'll 
sing  'God  Save  the  King.'"  The  two  guards  rose  and 
stood  at  attention,  and  the  chaplain  sang  the  national 


38  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

anthem  with  the  man  wlio  was  to  be  shot  for  cowardice. 
Then  the  tramp  of  the  firing-party  came  across  the  cobble- 
stones in  the  courtyard.     It  was  dawn. 

XIV 

Shell-shock  was  the  worst  thing  to  see.  There  were 
generals  who  said:  ''There  is  no  such  thing  as  shell-shock. 
It  is  cowardice.  I  would  court-martial  in  every  case." 
Doctors  said:  "It  is  difficult  to  draw  the  line  between 
shell-shock  and  blue  funk.  Both  are  physical  as  well  as 
mental.  Often  it  is  the  destruction  of  the  nerve  tissues 
by  concussion,  or  actual  physical  damage  to  the  brain; 
sometimes  it  is  a  shock  of  horror  unbalancing  the  mind, 
but  that  is  more  rare.  It  is  not  generally  the  slight,  ner- 
vous men  who  suffer  worst  from  shell-shock.  It  is  often 
the  stolid  fellow,  one  of  those  we  describe  as  being 
utterly  without  nerves,  who  goes  down  badly.  Something 
snaps  in  him.  He  has  no  resihence  in  his  nervous  system. 
He  has  never  trained  himself  in  nerve-control,  being  so 
stolid  and  self-reliant.  Now,  the  nervous  man,  the  cock- 
ney, for  example,  is  always  training  himself  in  the  control 
of  his  nerves,  on  'buses  v/hich  lurch  round  corners,  in  the 
traffic  that  bears  down  on  him,  in  a  thousand  and  one 
situations  which  demand  self-control  in  a  'nervy'  man. 
That  helps  him  in  war;  whereas  the  yokel,  or  the  sergeant- 
major  type,  is  splendid  until  the  shock  comes.  Then  he 
may  crack.  But  there  is  no  law.  Imagination — appre- 
hension— are  the  devil,  too,  and  they  go  with  'nerves.'" 

It  was  a  sergeant-major  whom  I  saw  stricken  badly 
with  shell-shock  in  Aveluy  Wood  near  Thiepval.  He 
was  convulsed  with  a  dreadful  rigor  like  a  man  in  epilepsy, 
r  and  clawed  at  his  mouth,  moaning  horribly,  with  livid 
^.terror  in  his  eyes.  He  had  to  be  strapped  to  a  stretcher 
before  he  could  be  carried  away.  He  had  been  a  tall  and 
splendid  man,  this  poor,  terror-stricken  lunatic. 
^ .'  Nearer  to  Thiepval,  during  the  fighting  there,  other 
men  were  brought  down  with  shell-shock.     I  remember 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  39 

one  of  them  now,  though  I  saw  many  others.  He  was 
a  Wiltshire  lad,  very  young,  with  an  apple-cheeked  face 
and  blue-gray  eyes.  He  stood  outside  a  dugout,  shaking 
in  every  Hmb,  in  a  palsied  way.  His  steel  hat  was  at  the 
back  of  his  head  and  his  mouth  slobbered,  and  two  com-' 
rades  could  not  hold  him  still.  , 

These  badly  shell-shocked  boys  clawed  their  mouths  ^^^ 
ceaselessly.  It  was  a  common,  dreadful  action.  Others 
sat  in  the  field  hospitals  in  a  state  of  coma,  dazed,  as 
though  deaf,  and  actually  dumb.  I  hated  to  see  them, 
turned  my  eyes  away  from  them,  and  yet  wished  that  they 
might  be  seen  by  bloody-minded  men  and  women  who', 
far  behind  the  lines,  still  spoke  of  war  lightly,  as  a  kind  of 
sport,  or  heroic  game,  which  brave  boys  liked  or  ought  to 
Hke,  and  said,  "We'll  fight  on  to  the  last  man  rather  than 
accept  anything  less  than  absolute  victory,"  and  when 
victory  came  said:  "We  stopped  too  soon.  We  ought  to 
have  gone  on  for  another  three  months."  It  was  for 
fighting-men  to  say  those  things,  because  they  knew  the 
things  they  suffered  and  risked.  That  word  "we"  was 
not  to  be  used  by  gentlemen  in  government  offices  scared 
of  air  raids,  nor  by  women  dancing  in  scanty  frocks  at 
war-bazaars  for  the  "poor  dear  wounded,"  nor  even  by 
generals  at  G.  H.  Q.,  enjoying  the  thrill  of  war  without 
its  dirt  and  danger. 

Seeing  these  shell-shock  cases  month  after  month,  dur-l  , 
ing  years  of  fighting,  I,  as  an  onlooker,  hated  the  people, 
who  had  not  seen,  and  were  callous  of  this  misery;  the 
laughing  girls  in  the  Strand  greeting  the  boys  on  seven 
days'  leave;  the  newspaper  editors  and  leader-writers 
whose  articles  on  war  were  always  "cheery";  the  bishops 
and  clergy  who  praised  God  as  the  Commander-in-Chief 
of  the  Allied  armies,  and  had  never  said  a  word  before  the 
war  to  make  it  less  inevitable;  the  schoolmasters  who 
gloried  in  the  lengthening  "Roll  of  Honor"  and  said, 
"We're  doing  very  well,"  when  more  boys  died;  the 
pretty  woman-faces  ogling  in  the  picture-papers,  as  "well- 
knov/n  war-workers";    the  munition-workers  who  were 


40  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

getting  good  wages  out  of  the  war;  the  working-women 
who  were  buying  gramophones  and  furs  while  their  men 
were  in  the  stinking  trenches;  the  dreadful,  callous,  cheer- 
ful spirit  of  England  at  war. 

Often  I  was  unfair,  bitter,  unbalanced,  wrong.  The 
spirit  of  England,  taking  it  broad  and  large — with  dread- 
ful exceptions — was  wonderful  in  its  courage  and  patience, 
and  ached  with  sympathy  for  its  fighting  sons,  and  was 
stricken  with  the  tragedy  of  all  this  slaughter.  There 
were  many  tears  in  English  homes;  many  sad  and  lonely 
women.  But,  as  an  onlooker,  I  could  not  be  just  or  fair, 
and  hated  the  non-combatants  who  did  not  reveal  its 
wound  in  their  souls,  but  were  placid  in  their  belief  that 
we  should  win,  and  pleased  with  themselves  because  of 
their  easy  optimism.     So  easy  for  those  who  did  not  see! 


XV 

As  war  correspondents  we  were  supposed  to  have 
honorary  rank  as  captains,  by  custom  and  tradition — but 
it  amounted  to  nothing,  here  or  there.  We  were  civilians 
in  khaki,  with  green  bands  round  our  right  arms,  and 
uncertain  status.  It  was  better  so,  because  we  were  in 
the  peculiar  and  privileged  position  of  being  able  to  speak 
to  Tommies  and  sergeants  as  human  beings,  to  be  on 
terms  of  comradeship  with  junior  subalterns  and  battalion 
commanders,  and  to  sit  at  the  right  hand  of  generals  with- 
out embarrassment  to  them  or  to  ourselves. 

Physically,  many  of  our  generals  were  curiously  alike. 
They  were  men  turned  fifty,  with  square  jaws,  tanned, 
ruddy  faces,  searching  and  rather  stern  gray  eyes,  closely 
cropped  hair  growing  white,  with  a  little  white  mustache, 
neatly  trimmed,  on  the  upper  lip. 

Mentally  they  had  similar  qualities.  They  had  un- 
faiUng  physical  courage — though  courage  is  not  put  to 
the  test  much  in  modern  generalship,  which,  above  the 
rank  of  brigadier,  works  far  from  the  actual  line  of  battle, 
unless  it  "slips"  in  the  wrong  direction.     They  were  stern 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  41 

disciplinarians,  and  tested  the  quality  of  troops  by  their 
smartness  in  saluting  and  on  parade,  which  did  not  account 
for  the  fighting  merit  of  the  Austrahans.  Most  of  them 
were  conservative  by  political  tradition  and  hereditary 
instinct,  and  conservative  also  in  military  ideas  and 
methods.  They  distrusted  the  "brilliant"  fellow,  and 
were  inclined  to  think  him  unsafe;  and  they  were  not 
quick  to  allow  young  men  to  gain  high  command  at  the 
expense  of  their  gray  hair  and  experience.  They  were 
industrious,  able,  conscientious  men,  never  sparing  them- 
selves long  hours  of  work  for  a  life  of  ease,  and  because 
they  were  willing  to  sacrifice  their  own  Hves,  if  need  be, 
for  their  country's  sake,  they  demanded  equal  wiUingness 
of  sacrifice  from  every  officer  and  man  under  their  au- 
thority, having  no  mercy  whatever  for  the  slacker  or  the 
weakling. 

Among  them  there  was  not  one  whose  personality  had 
that  mysterious  but  essential  quaUty  of  great  generalship  j 
— inspiring  large  bodies  of  men  with  exalted  enthusiasm, 
devotion,  and  faith.  It  did  not  matter  to  the  men 
whether  an  army  commander,  a  corps  commander,  or  a 
divisional  commander  stood  in  the  roadside  to  watch 
them  march  past  on  their  way  to  battle  or  on  their  way 
back.  They  saw  one  of  these  sturdy  men  in  his  brass 
hat,  with  his  ruddy  face  and  white  mustache,  but  no 
thrill  passed  down  their  ranks,  no  hoarse  cheers  broke 
from  them  because  he  was  there,  as  when  Wellington  sat 
on  his  white  horse  in  the  Peninsular  War,  or  as  when 
Napoleon  saluted  his  Old  Guard,  or  even  as  when  Lord 
Roberts,  "Our  Bob,"  came  perched  hke  a  little  old  falcon 
on  his  big  charger. 

Nine  men  out  of  ten  in  the  ranks  did  not  even  know 
the  name  of  their  army  general  or  of  the  corps  commander. 
It  meant  nothing  to  them.  They  did  not  face  death  with 
more  passionate  courage  to  win  the  approval  of  a  military 
idol.  That  was  due  partly  to  the  conditions  of  modern 
warfare,  which  make  it  difficult  for  generals  of  high  rank 
to  get  into  direct  personal  touch  with  their  troops,  and  to 


42  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  masses  of  men  engaged.  But  those  difficulties  could 
have  been  overcome  by  a  general  of  impressive  personality, 
able  to  stir  the  imaginations  of  men  by  words  of  fire 
spoken  at  the  right  time,  by  deep,  human  sympathy,  and 
by  the  luck  of  victory  seized  by  daring  adventure  against 
great  odds. 

No  such  man  appeared  on  the  western  front  until  Foch 
obtained  the  supreme  command.  On  the  British  front 
there  was  no  general  with  the  gift  of  speech — a  gift  too 
much  despised  by  our  British  men  of  action — or  with  a 
character  and  prestige  which  could  raise  him  to  the 
highest  rank  in  popular  imagination.  During  the  retreat 
from  Mona,  Sir  John  French  had  a  touch  of  that  personal 
power — his  presence  meant  something  to  the  men  because 
of  his  reputation  in  South  Africa;  but  afterward,  when 
trench  warfare  began,  and  the  daily  routine  of  slaughter 
under  German  gun-fire,  when  our  artillery  was  weak,  and 
when  our  infantry  was  ordered  to  attack  fixed  positions 
of  terrible  strength  without  adequate  support,  and  not 
a  dog's  chance  of  luck  against  such  odds,  the  prestige  of 
the  Commander-in-Chief  faded  from  men's  minds  and  he 
lost  place  in  their  admiration.  It  was  washed  out  in 
blood  and  mud. 

Sir  Douglas  Haig,  who  followed  Sir  John  French,  in- 
herited the  disillusionment  of  armies  who  saw  now  that 
war  on  the  western  front  was  to  be  a  long  struggle,  with 
enormous  slaughter,  and  no  visible  sign  of  the  end  beyond 
a  vista  of  dreadful  years.  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  in  his  general 
headquarters  at  St.-Omer,  and  afterward  at  Montreuil, 
near  the  coast,  had  the  affection  and  loyalty  of  the  staff- 
officers.  A  man  of  remarkably  good  looks,  with  fine, 
delicate  features,  strengthened  by  the  firm  line  of  his  jaw, 
and  of  singular  sweetness,  courtesy,  and  simplicity  in  his 
manner  toward  all  who  approached  him,  he  had  qualities 
which  might  have  raised  him  to  the  supreme  height  of 
personal  influence  among  his  armies  but  for  lack  of  the 
magic  touch  and  the  tragic  condition  of  his  command. 

He  was  intensely  shy  and  reserved,  shrinking  from  pub- 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  43 

licity  and  holding  himself  aloof  from  the  human  side  of 
war.  He  was  constitutionally  unable  to  make  a  dramatic 
gesture  before  a  multitude,  or  to  say  easy,  stirring  things 
to  officers  and  men  whom  he  reviewed.  His  shyness  and 
reserve  prevented  him  also  from  knowing  as  much  as  he 
ought  to  have  known  about  the  opinions  of  officers  and 
men,  and  getting  direct  information  from  them.  He  held 
the  supreme  command  of  the  British  armies  on  the  west- 
ern front  when,  in  the  battlefields  of  the  Somme  and 
Flanders,  of  Picardy  and  Artois,  there  was  not  much 
chance  for  daring  strategy,  but  only  for  hammer-strokes 
by  the  flesh  and  blood  of  men  against  fortress  positions — 
the  German  trench  systems,  twenty-five  miles  deep  in 
tunneled  earthworks  and  machine-gun  dugouts — when  the 
immensity  of  casualties  among  British  troops  was  out  of 
all  proportion  to  their  gains  of  ground,  so  that  our  men's 
spirits  revolted  against  these  massacres  of  their  youth 
and  they  were  embittered  against  the  generalship  and 
staff-work  which  directed  these  sacrificial  actions. 

This  sense  of  bitterness  became  intense,  to  the  point  of 
fury,  so  that  a  young  staff-officer,  in  his  red  tabs,  with  a 
jaunty  manner,  was  like  a  red  rag  to  a  bull  among  bat- 
talion officers  and  men,  and  they  desired  his  death  ex- 
ceedingly, exalting  his  little  personality,  dressed  in  a  well- 
cut  tunic  and  fawn-colored  riding-breeches  and  highly 
polished  top-boots,  into  the  supreme  folly  of  "the  Staff" 
which  made  men  attack  impossible  positions,  send  down 
conflicting  orders,  issued  a  litter  of  documents — called  by 
an  ugly  name — containing  impracticable  instructions,  to 
the  torment  of  the  adjutants  and  to  the  scorn  of  the 
troops.  This  hatred  of  the  Staff  was  stoked  high  by  the 
fires  of  passion  and  despair.  Some  of  it  was  unjust,  and 
even  the  jaunty  young  staff-officer — a  G.  S.  O.  3,  with 
red  tabs  and  poHshed  boots — was  often  not  quite  such  a 
fool  as  he  looked,  but  a  fellow  who  had  proved  his  pluck 
in  the  early  days  of  the  war  and  was  now  doing  his  duty 
• — about  equal  to  the  work  of  a  boy  clerk — with  real  in- 
dustry and  an  exaggerated  sense  of  its  importance. 


44  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Personally  I  can  pay  high  tribute  to  some  of  our  staff- 
officers  at  divisional,  corps,  and  army  headquarters,  be- 
cause of  their  industry,  efficiency,  and  devotion  to  duty. 
And  during  the  progress  of  battle  I  have  seen  them,  hun- 
dreds of  times,  working  desperately  for  long  hours  with- 
out much  rest  or  sleep,  so  that  the  fighting-men  should  get 
their  food  and  munitions,  so  that  the  artillery  should 
support  their  actions,  and  the  troops  in  reserve  move  up 
to  their  relief  at  the  proper  time  and  place. 

Owing  largely  to  new  army  brains  the  administrative 
side  of  our  war  became  efficient  in  its  method  and  organi- 
zation, and  the  armies  were  worked  like  clockwork  ma- 
chines. The  transport  was  good  beyond  all  words  of 
praise,  and  there  was  one  thing  which  seldom  failed  to 
reach  poor  old  Tommy  Atkins,  unless  he  was  cut  off  by 
shell-fire,  and  that  was  his  food.  The  motor-supply 
columns  and  ammunition-dumps  were  organized  to  the 
last  item.  Our  map  department  was  magnificent,  and 
the  admiration  of  the  French.  Our  Intelligence  branch 
became  valuable  (apart  from  a  frequent  insanity  of 
optimism)  and  was  sometimes  uncanny  in  the  accuracy 
of  its  information  about  the  enemy's  disposition  and 
plans.  So  that  the  Staff  was  not  altogether  hopeless  in 
its  effect,  as  the  young  battalion  officers,  v/ith  sharp 
tongues  and  a  sense  of  injustice  in  their  hearts,  made  out, 
with  pardonable  blasphemy,  in  their  dugouts. 

Nevertheless  the  system  was  bad  and  British  general- 
ship made  many  mistakes,  some  of  them,  no  doubt,  un- 
avoidable, because  it  is  human  to  err,  and  some  of  them 
due  to  sheer,  simple,  impregnable  stupidity. 

In  the  early  days  the  outstanding  fault  of  our  generals 
was  their  desire  to  gain  ground  which  was  utterly  worth- 
less when  gained.  They  organized  small  attacks  against 
strong  positions,  dreadfully  costly  to  take,  and  after  the 
desperate  valor  of  men  had  seized  a  few  yards  of  mangled 
earth,  found  that  they  had  made  another  small  salient, 
jutting  out  from  their  front  in  a  V-shaped  wedge,  so  that 
it  was  a  death-trap  for  the  men  v/ho  had  to  hold  it.     This 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  45 

was  done  again  and  again,  and  I  remember  one  distin- 
guished officer  saying,  with  bitter  irony,  remembering 
how  many  of  his  men  had  died,  "Our  generals  must  have 
their  httle  V's  at  any  price,  to  justify  themselves  at 
G.  H.  Q." 

In  the  battles  of  the  Somme  they  attacked  isolated 
objectives  on  narrow  fronts,  so  that  the  enemy  swept  our 
men  with  fire  by  artillery  concentrated  from  all  points, 
instead  of  having  to  disperse  his  fire  during  a  general 
attack  on  a  wide  front.  In  the  days  of  trench  warfare, 
when  the  enemy  artillery  was  much  stronger  than  ours, 
and  when  his  infantry  strength  was  enormously  greater, 
our  generals  insisted  upon  the  British  troops  maintaining 
an  "aggressive"  attitude,  with  the  result  that  they  were 
shot  to  pieces,  instead  of  adopting,  like  the  French,  a 
quiet  and  waiting  attitude  until  the  time  came  for  a  sharp 
and  terrible  blow.  The  battles  of  Neuve  Chapelle,  Fertu- 
bert,  and  Loos,  in  191 5,  cost  us  thousands  of  dead  and 
gave  us  no  gain  of  any  account;  and  both  generalship 
and  staff-work  were,  in  the  opinion  of  most  officers  who 
know  anything  of  those  battles,  ghastly. 

After  all,  our  generals  had  to  learn  their  lesson,  like  the 
private  soldier,  and  the  young  battalion  officer,  in  con- 
ditions of  warfare  which  had  never  been  seen  before — 
and  it  was  bad  for  the  private  soldier  and  the  young  bat- 
talion officer,  who  died  so  they  might  learn.  As  time 
went  on  staff-work  improved,  and  British  generalship  was 
less  rash  in  optimism  and  less  rigid  in  ideas. 

XVI 

General  Haldane  was  friendly  to  the  war  correspond- 
ents— he  had  been  something  of  the  kind  himself  in 
earlier  days — and  we  were  welcomed  at  his  headquarters, 
both  when  he  commanded  the  3d  Division  and  afterward 
when  he  became  commander  of  the  6th  Corps.  I  thought 
during  the  war,  and  I  think  now,  that  he  had  more  intel- 
lect and  "quality"  than  many  of  our  other  generals.     A 


46  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

tall,  strongly  built  man,  with  a  distinction  of  movement 
and  gesture,  not  "stocky"  or  rigid,  but  nervous  and 
restless,  he  gave  one  a  sense  of  power  and  intensity  of 
purpose.  There  was  a  kind  of  slow-burning  fire  in  him — 
a  hatred  of  the  enemy  which  was  not  weakened  in  him  by 
any  mercy,  and  a  consuming  rage,  as  it  appeared  to  me, 
against  inefficiency  in  high  places,  injustice  of  which  he 
may  have  felt  himself  to  be  the  victim,  and  restrictions 
upon  his  liberty  of  command.  A  bitter  irony  was  often 
in  his  laughter  when  discussing  politicians  at  home,  and 
the  wider  strategy  of  war  apart  from  that  on  his  own 
front.  He  was  intolerant  of  stupidity,  which  he  found 
widespread,  and  there  was  no  tenderness  or  emotion  in 
his  attitude  toward  life.  The  officers  and  men  under  his 
command  accused  him  of  ruthlessness.  But  they  ad- 
mitted that  he  took  more  personal  risk  than  he  need  have 
done  as  a  divisional  general,  and  was  constantly  in  the 
trenches  examining  his  line.  They  also  acknowledged 
that  he  was  generous  in  his  praise  of  their  good  service, 
though  merciless  if  he  found  fault  with  them.  He  held 
himself  aloof — too  much,  I  am  sure — from  his  battalion 
officers,  and  had  an  extreme  haughtiness  of  bearing  which 
was  partly  due  to  reserve  and  that  shyness  which  is  in 
many  Englishmen  and  a  few  Scots. 

In  the  old  salient  warfare  he  often  demanded  service 
in  the  way  of  raids  and  the  holding  of  death-traps,  and  the 
execution  of  minor  attacks  which  caused  many  casual- 
ties, and  filled  men  with  rage  and  horror  at  what  they 
believed  to  be  unnecessary  waste  of  life — their  Hfe,  and 
their  comrades' — that  did  not  make  for  popularity  in  the 
ranks  of  the  battalion  messes.  Privately,  in  his  own 
mess,  he  was  gracious  to  visitors,  and  revealed  not  only 
a  wide  range  of  knowledge  outside  as  well  as  inside  his 
profession,  but  a  curious,  unexpected  sympathy  for  ideas, 
not  belonging  as  a  rule  to  generals  of  the  old  caste.  I 
liked  him,  though  I  was  always  conscious  of  that  flame 
and  steel  in  his  nature  which  made  his-  psychology  a 
world   away  from  mine.     He  was  hit  hard — in  what  I 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  47 

think  was  the  softest  spot  in  his  heart — by  the  death  of 
one  of  his  A.  D.  C.'s — young  Congreve,  who  was  the  beau 
ideal  of  knighthood,  wonderfully  handsome,  elegant  even 
when  covered  from  head  to  foot  in  wet  mud  (as  I  saw  him 
one  day),  fearless,  or  at  least  scornful  of  danger,  to  the 
verge  of  recklessness.  General  Haldane  had  marked  him 
out  as  the  most  promising  young  soldier  in  the  whole 
army.  A  bit  of  shell,  a  senseless  bit  of  steel,  spoiled  that 
promise — as  it  spoiled  the  promise  of  a  million  boys — 
and  the  general  was  saddened  more  than  by  the  death  of 
other  gallant  officers. 

I  have  one  memory  of  General  Haldane  which  shows 
him  in  a  different  light.  It  was  during  the  great  German 
offensive  in  the  north,  when  Arras  was  hard  beset  and 
the  enemy  had  come  back  over  Monchy  Hill  and  was 
sheUing  villages  on  the  western  side  of  Arras,  which  until 
then  had  been  undamaged.  It  was  in  one  of  these  villages 
— near  Avesnes-le-Compte — to  which  the  general  had 
come  back  with  his  corps  headquarters,  estabHshed  there 
for  many  months  in  earlier  days,  so  that  the  peasants  and 
their  children  knew  him  well  by  sight  and  had  talked  with 
him,  because  he  liked  to  speak  French  with  them.  When 
I  went  to  see  him  one  day  during  that  bad  time  in  April 
of  '18,  he  was  surrounded  by  a  group  of  children  who  were 
asking  anxiously  whether  Arras  would  be  taken.  He 
drew  a  map  for  them  in  the  dust  of  the  roadway,  and 
showed  them  where  the  enemy  was  attacking  and  the 
general  strategy.  He  spoke  simply  and  gravely,  as  though 
to  a  group  of  staff-officers,  and  the  children  followed  his 
diagram  in  the  dust  and  understood  him  perfectly. 

"They  will  not  take  Arras  if  I  can  help  it,"  he  said. 
"You  will  be  all  right  here." 


XVII 

Gen.  Sir  Neville  Macready  was  adjutant-general 
in  the  days  of  Sir  John  French,  and  I  dined  at  his  mess 
once  or  twice,  and  he  came  to  ours  on  return  visits.     The 


48  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

son  of  Macready,  the  actor,  ne  had  a  subtlety  of  mind 
not  common  among  British  generals,  to  whom  "subtlety" 
in  any  form  is  repulsive.  His  sense  of  humor  was  devel- 
oped upon  lines  of  irony  and  he  had  a  sly  twinkle  in  his 
eyes  before  telling  one  of  his  innumerable  anecdotes. 
They  were  good  stories,  and  I  remember  one  of  them, 
which  had  to  do  with  the  retreat  from  Mons.  It  was  not, 
to  tell  the  truth,  that  "orderly"  retreat  which  is  described 
in  second-hand  accounts.  There  were  times  wjien  it  was 
a  wild  stampede  from  the  tightening  loop  of  a  German 
advance,  with  lorries  and  motor-cycles  and  transport 
wagons  going  helter-skelter  among  civilian  refugees  and 
mixed  battalions  and  stragglers  from  every  unit  walking, 
footsore,  in  small  groups.  Even  General  Headquarters 
was  flurried  at  times,  far  in  advance  of  this  procession 
backward.  One  night  Sir  Neville  Macready,  with  the 
judge  advocate  and  an  ofl&cer  named  Colonel  Childs  (a 
hot-headed  fellow!),  took  up  their  quarters  in  a  French 
chateau  somewhere,  I  think,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Creil. 
The  Commander-in-Chief  was  in  another  chateau  some  dis- 
tance away.  Other  branches  of  G.  H.  Q.  were  billeted  in 
private  houses,  widely  scattered  about  a  straggling  village. 

Colonel  Childs  was  writing  opposite  the  adjutant-gen- 
eral, who  was  working  silently.  Presently  Childs  looked 
up,  listened,  and  said: 

"It's  rather  quiet,  sir,  outside." 

"So  much  the  better,"  growled  General  Macready. 
"Get  on  with  your  job." 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  passed.  No  rumble  of  traffic 
passed  by  the  windows.  No  gun-wagons  were  jolting  over 
French  pave. 

Colonel  Childs  looked  up  again  and  listened. 

"It's  damned  quiet  outside,  sir." 

"Well,  don't  go  making  a  noise,"  said  the  general. 
"Can't  you  see  I'm  busy?" 

"I  think  I'll  just  take  a  turn  round,"  said  Colonel  Childs. 

He  felt  uneasy.  Something  in  the  silence  of  the  village 
scared  him.    He  went  out  into  the  roadway  and  walked 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  49 

toward  Sir  John  French's  quarters.  There  was  no  chal- 
lenge from  a  sentry.  The  British  Expeditionary  Force 
seemed  to  be  sleeping.  They  needed  sleep — poor  beg- 
gars!— but  the  Germans  did  not  let  them  take  much. 

Colonel  Childs  went  into  the  Commander-in-Chief's 
chateau  and  found  a  soldier  in  the  front  hall,  hcking  out 
a  jam-pot. 

"Where's  the  Commander-in-Chief?"  asked  the  officer. 

''Gone  hours  ago,  sir,"  said  the  soldier.  "I  was  left 
behind  for  lack  of  transport.  From  what  I  hear  the  Ger- 
mans ought  to  be  here  by  now.  I  rather  fancy  I  heard 
some  shots  pretty  close  awhile  ago." 

Colonel  Childs  walked  back  to  his  own  quarters  quickly. 
He  made  no  apology  for  interrupting  the  v/ork  of  the 
adjutant-general. 

''General,  the  whole  box  of  tricks  has  gone.  We've 
been  left  behind.     Forgotten!" 

"The  dirty  dogs!"  said  General  Macready. 

There  was  not  much  time  for  packing  up,  and  only  one 
motor-car,  and  only  one  rifle.  The  general  said  he  would 
look  after  the  rifle,  but  Colonel  Childs  said  if  that  were 
so  he  would  rather  stay  behind  and  take  his  chance  of 
being  captured.  It  would  be  safer  for  him.  So  the 
adjutant-general,  the  judge  advocate,  the  deputy  assist- 
ant judge  advocate  (Colonel  Childs),  and  an  orderly  or 
two  packed  into  the  car  and  set  out  to  find  G.  H.  Q. 
Before  they  found  it  they  had  to  run  the  gantlet  of  Ger- 
mans, and  were  sniped  all  the  way  through  a  wood,  and 
took  flying  shots  at  moving  figures.  Then,  miles  away, 
they  found  G.  H.  Q. 

"And  weren't  they  sorry  to  see  me  again!"  said  General 
Macready,  who  told  me  the  tale.  "They  thought  they 
had  lost  me  forever." 

The  day's  casualty  list  was  brought  into  the  adjutant- 
general  one  evening  when  I  was  dining  in  his  mess.  The 
orderly  put  it  down  by  the  side  of  his  plate,  and  he  inter- 
rupted a  funny  story  to  glance  down  the  columns  of  names. 

"Du  Maurier  has  been  killed.  .  .  .  I'm  sorry." 


so  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

He  put  down  the  paper  beside  his  plate  again  and  con- 
tinued his  story,  and  we  all  laughed  heartily  at  the  end 
of  the  anecdote.  It  was  the  only  way,  and  the  soldier's 
way.  There  was  no  hugging  of  grief  when  our  best  friend 
fell.  A  sigh,  another  ghost  in  one's  life,  and  then,  "Carry 
on!" 


/ 


XVIII 


Scores  of  times,  hundreds  of  times,  during  the  battles 
of  the  Somme,  I  passed  the  headquarters  of  Gen.  Sir 
Henry  Rawlinson,  commanding  the  Fourth  Army,  and 
several  times  I  met  the  army  commander  there  and  else- 
where. One  of  my  first  meetings  with  him  was  extraor- 
dinarily embarrassing  to  me  for  a  moment  or  two.  While 
he  was  organizing  his  army,  which  was  to  be  called,  with 
unconscious  irony,  *'The  Army  of  Pursuit" — the  battles 
of  the  Somme  were  a  siege  rather  than  a  pursuit — he  de- 
sired to  take  over  the  chateau  at  Tilques,  in  which  the 
war  correspondents  were  then  quartered.  As  we  were 
paying  for  it  and  liked  it,  we  put  up  an  opposition  which 
was  most  annoying  to  his  A.  D.  C.'s,  especially  to  one 
young  gentleman  of  enormous  wealth,  haughty  manners, 
and  a  boyish  intolerance  of  other  people's  interests,  who 
had  looked  over  our  rooms  without  troubling  to  knock  at 
the  doors,  and  then  said,  "This  will  suit  us  down  to  the 
ground."  On  my  way  back  from  the  salient  one  evening 
I  walked  up  the  drive  in  the  flickering  light  of  summer 
eve,  and  saw  two  officers  coming  in  my  direction,  one  of 
whom  I  thought  I  recognized  as  an  old  friend. 

"Hullo!"  I  said,  cheerily.     "You  here  again?" 

Then  I  saw  that  I  was  face  to  face  with  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson.  He  must  have  been  surprised,  but  dug  me  in 
the  ribs  in  a  genial  way,  and  said,  "Hullo,  young  feller!" 

He  made  no  further  attempt  to  "pinch"  our  quarters, 
but  my  familiar  method  of  address  could  not  have  pro- 
duced that  result. 

His  headquarters  at  Querrieux  were  in  another  old 
chateau  on  the  Amiens-Albert  road,  surrounded  by  pleas- 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  51 

ant  fields  through  which  a  stream  wound  its  way.  Every- 
where the  sign-boards  were  red,  and  a  miUtary  pohceman, 
authorized  to  secure  obedience  to  the  rules  thereon, 
slowed  down  every  motor-car  on  its  way  through  the 
village,  as  though  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  lay  sick  of  a  fever, 
so  anxious  were  his  gestures  and  his  expression  of  **Hush! 
do  be  careful!" 

The  army  commander  seemed  to  me  to  have  a  roguish 
eye.  He  seemed  to  be  thinking  to  himself,  "This  war 
is  a  rare  old  joke!"  He  spoke  habitually  of  the  enemy  as 
"the  old  Hun"  or  "old  Fritz,"  in  an  affectionate,  con- 
temptuous way,  as  a  fellow  who  was  trying  his  best  but 
getting  the  worst  of  it  every  time.  Before  the  battles 
of  the  Somme  I  had  a  talk  with  him  among  his  maps,  and 
found  that  I  had  been  to  many  places  in  his  line  which 
he  did  not  seem  to  know.  He  could  not  find  them  very 
quickly  on  his  large-sized  maps,  or  pretended  not  to, 
though  I  concluded  that  this  was  "camouflage,"  in  case 
I  might  tell  "old  Fritz"  that  such  places  existed.  Like 
most  of  our  generals,  he  had  amazing,  overweening  op- 
timism. He  had  always  got  the  enemy  "nearly  beat," 
and  he  arranged  attacks  during  the  Somme  fighting  with 
the  jovial  sense  of  striking  another  blow  which  would 
lead  this  time  to  stupendous  results.  In  the  early  days, 
in  command  of  the  7th  Division,  he  had  done  well,  and 
he  was  a  gallant  soldier,  with  initiative  and  courage  of 
decision  and  a  quick  intelligence  in  open  warfare.  His 
trouble  on  the  Somme  was  that  the  enemy  did  not  permit 
open  warfare,  but  made  a  siege  of  it,  with  defensive  lines 
all  the  way  back  to  Bapaume,  and  every  hillock  a 
machine-gun  fortress  and  every  wood  a  death-trap.  We 
were  always  preparing  for  a  "break-through"  for  cavalry 
pursuit,  and  the  cavalry  were  always  being  massed  behind 
the  lines  and  then  turned  back  again,  after  futile  waiting, 
encumbering  the  roads.  "The  blood  bath  of  the  Somme," 
as  the  Germans  called  it,  was  ours  as  well  as  theirs,  and 
scores  of  times  when  I  saw  the  dead  bodies  of  our  men 
lying  strewn  over  those  dreadful  fields,  after  desperate 


K2  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

and,  in  the  end,  successful  attacks  through  the  woods  of 
death — Mametz  Wood,  Delville  Wood,  Trones  Wood, 
Bernafay  Wood,  High  Wood,  and  over  the  Pozieres  ridge 
to  Courcellette  and  Martinpuich — I  thought  of  Rawhn- 
son  in  his  chateau  in  Querrieux,  scheming  out  the  battles 
and  ordering  up  new  masses  of  troops  to  the  great  assault 
over  the  bodies  of  their  dead.  .  .  .  Well,  it  is  not  for  gen- 
erals to  sit  down  v/ith  their  heads  in  their  hands,  bemoan- 
ing slaughter,  or  to  shed  tears  over  their  maps  when 
directing  battle.  It  is  their  job  to  be  cheerful,  to  harden 
their  hearts  against  the  casualty  lists,  to  keep  out  of  the 
danger-zone  unless  their  presence  is  strictly  necessary. 
But  it  is  inevitable  that  the  men  who  risk  death  daily,  the 
fighting-men  who  carry  out  the  plans  of  the  High  Com- 
mand and  see  no  sense  in  them,  should  be  savage  in  their 
irony  when  they  pass  a  peaceful  house  Vs^here  their  doom 
is  being  planned,  and  green-eyed  when  they  see  an  army 
general  taking  a  stroll  in  buttercup  fields,  with  a  jaunty 
young  A.  D.  C.  slashing  the  flowers  with  his  cane  and 
telling  the  latest  joke  from  London  to  his  laughing  chief. 
As  onlookers  of  sacrifice  some  of  us — I,  for  one — ^adopted 
the  point  of  view  of  the  men  who  were  to  die,  finding  some 
reason  in  their  hatred  of  the  staffs,  though  they  were 
doing  their  job  with  a  sense  of  duty,  and  with  as  much 
intelligence  as  God  had  given  them.  Gen.  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson  was  one  of  our  best  generals,  as  may  be  seen 
by  the  ribbons  on  his  breast,  and  in  the  last  phase  com- 
manded a  real  "Army  of  Pursuit,"  which  had  the  enemy 
on  the  run,  and  broke  through  to  Victory.  It  was  in  that 
last  phase  of  open  warfare  that  Rawlinson  showed  his 
qualities  of  generalship  and  once  again  that  driving  pur- 
pose which  was  his  in  the  Somme  battles,  but  achieved 
only  by  prodigious  cost  of  life. 


XIX 

Of  General  Allenby,  commanding  the  Third  Army  be- 
fore he  was  succeeded  by  Gen.  Sir  JuHan  Byng  and  went 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  53 

to  his  triumph  in  Palestine,  I  knew  very  little  except  by 
hearsay.  He  went  by  the  name  of  "The  Bull,"  because 
of  his  burly  size  and  deep  voice.  The  costly  fighting  that 
followed  the  battle  of  Arras  on  April  9th  along  the  glacis 
of  the  Scarpe  did  not  reveal  high  generalship.  There 
were  many  young  officers — and  some  divisional  generals 
— ^who  complained  bitterly  of  attacks  ordered  without 
sufficient  forethought,  and  the  stream  of  casualties  which 
poured  back,  day  by  day,  with  tales  of  tragic  happenings 
did  not  inspire  one  with  a  sense  of  some  high  purpose 
behind  it  all,  or  some  presiding  genius. 

General  Byng,  "Bungo  Byng,"  as  he  was  called  by  his 
troops,  won  the  admiration  of  the  Canadian  Corps  which 
he  commanded,  and  afterward,  in  the  Cambrai  advance 
of  November,  '17,  he  showed  daring  of  conception  and 
gained  the  first  striking  surprise  in  the  war  by  novel 
methods  of  attack — spoiled  by  the  quick  come-back  of 
the  enemy  under  Von  Mai"witz  and  our  withdrawal  from 
Bourlon  Wood,  Masnieres,  and  Marcoing,  and  other 
places,  after  desperate  fighting. 

His  chief  of  staff,  Gen.  Louis  Vaughan,  was  a  charming, 
gentle-mannered  man,  with  a  scientific  outlook  on  the 
problems  of  war,  and  so  kind  in  his  expression  and  char- 
acter that  it  seemed  impossible  that  he  could  devise 
methods  of  killing  Germans  in  a  wholesale  way.  He  was 
like  an  Oxford  professor  of  history  discoursing  on  the 
Marlborough  wars,  though  when  I  saw  him  many  times 
outside  the  Third  Army  headquarters,  in  a  railway  car- 
riage, somewhere  near  Villers  Carbonnel  on  the  Somme 
battlefields,  he  was  explaining  his  preparations  and  strat- 
egy for  actions  to  be  fought  next  day  which  would  be  of 
bloody  consequence  to  our  men  and  the  enemy. 

General  Birdwood,  commanding  the  Australian  Corps, 
and  afterward  the  Fifth  Army  in  succession  to  General 
Gough,  was  alv/ays  known  as  "Birdie"  by  high  and  low, 
and  this  dapper  man,  so  neat,  so  bright,  so  brisk,  had  a 
human  touch  with  him  which  won  him  the  affection  of 
all  his  troops. 

5 


54  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Gen.  Hunter  Weston,  of  the  8th  Corps,  was  another 
man  of  character  in  high  command.  He  spoke  of  himself 
In  the  House  of  Commons  one  day  as  "a  plain,  blunt 
soldier,"  and  the  army  roared  with  laughter  from  end  to 
end.  There  was  nothing  plain  or  blunt  about  him.  He 
was  a  man  of  airy  imagination  and  a  wide  range  of  knowl- 
edge, and  theories  on  life  and  war  which  he  put  forward 
with  dramatic  eloquence. 

It  was  of  Gen.  Hunter  Weston  that  the  story  was  told 
about  the  drunken  soldier  put  onto  a  stretcher  and  cov- 
ered with  a  blanket,  to  get  him  out  of  the  way  when  the 
army  conmiander  made  a  visit  to  the  lines. 

"What's  this?"  said  the  general. 

*' Casualty,  sir,"  said  the  quaking  platoon  commander. 

*'Not  bad,  I  hope?" 

"Dead,  sir,"  said  the  subaltern.    He  meant  dead  drunk. 

The  general  drew  himself  up,  and  said,  in  his  dramatic 
way,  "The  army  commander  salutes  the  honored  dead!" 

And  the  drunken  private  put  his  head  from  under  the 
blanket  and  asked,  "What's  the  old  geezer  a-sayin'  of?" 

That  story  may  have  been  invented  in  a  battalion  mess, 
but  it  wf.nt  through  the  army  affixed  to  the  name  of 
Hunter  Weston,  and  seemed  to  fit  him. 

The  8th  Corps  was  on  the  left  in  the  first  attack  on  the 
Somme,  when  many  of  our  divisions  were  cut  to  pieces  in 
the  attempt  to  break  the  German  line  at  Gommecourt. 
It  was  a  ghastly  tragedy,  which  spoiled  the  success  on 
the  right  at  Fricourt  and  Montauban.  But  Gen.  Hunter 
Weston  was  not  degommey  as  the  French  would  say,  and 
continued  to  air  his  theories  on  life  and  warfare  until  the 
day  of  Victory,  when  once  again  we  had  "muddled 
through,"  not  by  great  generalship,  but  by  the  courage 
of  common  men. 

Among  the  divisional  generals  with  whom  I  came  in 
contact — I  met  most  of  them  at  one  time  or  another — 
were  General  Hull  of  the  56th  (London)  Division,  General 
Hickey  of  the  i6th  (Irish)  Division,  General  Harper  of 
the  t;ist  (Highland)  Division,  General  Nugent  of  the  36tl) 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  55 

(Ulster)  Division,  and  General  Pinnie  of  the  35th  TBan- 
tams)  Division,  afterward  of  the  33d. 

General  Hull  was  a  handsome,  straight-speaking, 
straight-thinking  man,  and  I  should  say  an  able  general. 
"Ruthless,"  his  men  said,  but  this  was  a  war  of  ruthless- 
ness,  because  life  was  cheap.  Bitter  he  was  at  times, 
because  he  had  to  order  his  men  to  do  things  which  he 
knew  were  folly.  I  remember  sitting  on  the  window-sill 
of  his  bedroom,  in  an  old  house  of  Arras,  while  he  gave  me 
an  account  of  "the  battle  in  the  dark,"  in  which  the 
Londoners  and  other  English  troops  lost  their  direction 
and  found  themselves  at  dawn  v/ith  the  enemy  behind 
them.  General  Hull  made  no  secret  of  the  tragedy  or 
the  stupidity.  .  .  .  On  another  day  I  met  him  somewhere 
on  the  other  side  of  Peronne,  before  March  21st,  v/hen  he 
was  commanding  the  l6th  (Irish;  Division  in  the  absence 
of  General  Hickey,  who  was  ill.  He  talked  a  good  deal 
about  the  belief  in  a  great  German  offensive,  and  gave 
many  reasons  for  thinking  it  was  all  "bluff."  A  few  days 
later  the  enemy  had  rolled  over  his  lines.  .  .  .  Out  of  thir- 
teen generals  I  met  at  that  time,  there  were  only  three 
who  believed  that  the  enemy  would  make  his  great  assault 
in  a  final  effort  to  gain  decisive  victory,  though  our  Intel- 
ligence had  amassed  innumerable  proofs  and  were  utterly 
convinced  of  the  approaching  menace. 

"They  will  never  risk  it!"  said  General  Gorringe  of 
the  47th  (London)  Division.  "Our  lines  are  too  strong. 
We  should  mow  them  down." 

I  was  standing  with  him  on  a  w^agon,  watching  the  sports 
of  the  London  men.  We  could  see  the  German  lines, 
south  of  St.-Quentin,  very  quiet  over  there,  without  any 
sign  of  coming  trouble.  A  few  days  later  the  place  where 
we  were  standing  was  under  waves  of  German  storm-troops. 

I  liked  the  love  of  General  Hickey  for  his  Irish  division. 
An  Irishman  himself,  with  a  touch  of  the  old  Irish  soldier 
as  drawn  by  Charles  Lever,  gay-hearted,  proud  of  his 
boys,  he  was  always  pleased  to  see  me  because  he  knew 
I  had  a  warm  spot  in  my  heart  for  the  Irish  troops.     He 


56  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

had  a  good  story  to  tell  every  time,  and  passed  me  on  to 
"the  boys"  to  get  at  the  heart  of  them.  It  was  long 
before  he  lost  hope  of  keeping  the  division  together, 
though  it  was  hard  to  get  recruits  and  losses  were  high 
at  Guillemont  and  Ginchy.  For  the  first  time  he  lost 
heart  and  was  very  sad  when  the  division  was  cut  to 
pieces  in  a  Flanders  battle.  It  lost  2,000  men  and  162 
officers  before  the  battle  began — they  were  shelled  to 
death  in  the  trenches — and  2,000  men  and  170  officers 
more  during  the  progress  of  the  battle.  It  was  mur- 
derous and  ghastly. 

General  Harper  of  the  51st  (Highland)  Division,  after- 
ward commanding  the  4th  Corps,  had  the  respect  of  his 
troops,  though  they  called  him  "Uncle"  because  of  his 
shock  of  white  hair.  The  Highland  division,  under  his 
command,  fought  many  battles  and  gained  great  honor, 
even  from  the  enemy,  who  feared  them  and  called  the 
kilted  men  "the  ladies  from  hell."  It  was  to  them  the 
Germans  sent  their  message  in  a  small  balloon  during  the 
retreat  from  the  Somme:  "Poor  old  51st.  Still  sticking 
it!     Cheery-oh!" 

"Uncle"  Harper  invited  me  to  lunch  in  his  mess,  and 
was  ironical  with  war  correspondents,  and  censors,  and 
the  British  public,  and  new  theories  of  training,  and  many 
things  in  which  he  saw  no  sense.  There  was  a  smolder- 
ing passion  in  him  which  glowed  in  his  dark  eyes. 

He  was  against  bayonet-training,  which  took  the  field 
against  rifle-fire  for  a  time. 

"No  man  in  this  war,"  he  said,  with  a  sweeping  asser- 
tion, "has  ever  been  killed  by  the  bayonet  unless  he  had 
his  hands  up  first."  And,  broadly  speaking,  I  think  he 
was  right,  in  spite  of  the  Director  of  Training,  who  was 
extremely  annoyed  with  me  when  I  quoted  this  authority. 


XX 

I  met  many  other  generals  who  were  men  of  ability, 
energy,  high  sense  of  duty,   and  strong  personality.     I 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  57 

found  them  intellectually,  with  few  exceptions,  narrowly 
molded  to  the  same  type,  strangely  limited  in  their  range 
of  ideas  and  qualities  of  character. 

"One  has  to  leave  many  gaps  in  one's  conversation  with 
generals,"  said  a  friend  of  mine,  after  lunching  with  an 
army  commander. 

That  was  true.  One  had  to  talk  to  them  on  the  lines 
of  leading  articles  in  The  Morning  Post.  Their  patriotism, 
their  know  ledge  of  human  nature,  their  ideaHsm,  and  their 
imagination  were  restricted  to  the  traditional  views  of 
EngUsh  country  gentlemen  of  the  Tory  school.  Any- 
thing outside  that  range  of  thought  was  to  them  heresy, 
treason,  or  wishy-washy  sentiment. 

What  mainly  was  wrong  with  our  generalship  was  the 
system  which  put  the  High  Command  into  the  hands  of 
a  group  of  men  belonging  to  the  old  school  of  war,  unable^ 
by  reason  of  their  age  and  traditions,  to  get  away  from 
rigid  methods  and  to  become  elastic  in  face  of  new  con- 
ditions. 

Our  Staff  College  had  been  hopelessly  inefficient  in  its 
system  of  training,  if  I  am  justified  in  forming  such  an 
opinion  from  specimens  produced  by  it,  who  had  the 
brains  of  canaries  and  the  manners  of  Potsdam.  There 
was  also  a  close  corporation  among  the  officers  of  the 
Regular  Army,  so  that  they  took  the  lion's  share  of  staff 
appointments,  thus  keeping  out  brilliant  young  men  of 
the  new  armies,  whose  brain-power,  to  say  the  least  of  it, 
was  on  a  higher  level  than  that  of  the  Sandhurst  standard. 
Here  and  there,  where  the  unprofessional  soldier  obtained 
a  chance  of  high  command  or  staff  authority,  he  proved 
the  value  of  the  business  mind  applied  to  war,  and  this 
was  seen  very  clearly — blindingly — in  the  able  general- 
ship of  the  Australian  Corps,  in  which  most  of  the  com- 
manders, like  Generals  Hobbs,  Monash,  and  others,  were 
men  in  civil  life  before  the  war.  The  same  thing  was 
observed  in  the  Canadian  Corps,  General  Currie,  the  corps 
commander,  having  been  an  estate  agent,  and  many  of 
his  high  officers  having  had  no  military  training  of  any 


S8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

scientific  importance  before  they  handled  their  own  men 
in  France  and  Flanders. 


XXI 

As  there  are  exceptions  to  every  rule,  so  harsh  criticism 
must  be  modified  in  favor  of  the  generalship  and  organi- 
zation of  the  Second  Army — of  rare  efficiency  under  the 
restrictions  and  authority  of  the  General  Staff.  I  often 
used  to  wonder  what  qualities  belonged  to  Sir  Herbert 
Plumer,  the  army  commander.  In  appearance  he  was 
almost  a  caricature  of  an  old-time  British  general,  with 
his  ruddy,  pippin-cheeked  face,  with  white  hair,  and  a 
fierce  little  white  mustache,  and  blue,  watery  eyes,  and 
a  little  pot-belly  and  short  legs.  He  puflPed  and  panted 
when  he  walked,  and  after  two  minutes  in  his  company 
Cyril  Maude  would  have  played  him  to  perfection.  The 
stafF-work  of  his  army  was  as  good  in  detail  as  any 
machinery  of  war  may  be,  and  the  tactical  direction  of 
the  Second  Army  battles  was  not  slipshod  nor  haphazard, 
as  so  many  others,  but  prepared  with  minute  attention 
to  detail  and  after  thoughtful  planning  of  the  general 
scheme.  The  battle  of  Wytschaete  and  Messines  was  a 
model  in  organization  and  method,  and  worked  in  its 
frightful  destructiveness  like  the  clockwork  of  a  death 
machine.  Even  the  battles  of  Flanders  in  the  autumn  of 
'17,  ghastly  as  they  were  in  the  losses  of  our  men  in  the 
state  of  the  ground  through  which  they  had  to  fight,  and 
in  futile  results,  were  well  organized  by  the  Second  Army 
headquarters,  compared  with  the  abominable  mismanage- 
ment of  other  troops,  the  contrast  being  visible  to  every 
battalion  oflftcer  and  even  to  the  private  soldier.  How 
much  share  of  this  was  due  to  Sir  Herbert  Plumer  it  is 
impossible  for  me  to  tell,  though  it  is  fair  to  give  him 
credit  for  soundness  of  judgment  in  general  ideas  and  in 
the  choice  of  men. 

He  had  for  his  chief  of  staff  Sir  John  Harington,  and 
beyond  all  doubt  this  general  was  the  organizing  brain  of 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  ,^9 

the  Second  Army,  though  with  punctilious  chivalry  he 
gave,  always,  the  credit  of  all  his  work  to  the  army  com- 
mander. A  thin,  nervous,  highly  strung  man,  with  ex- 
treme simplicity  of  manner  and  clarity  of  intelligence,  he 
impressed  me  as  a  brain  of  the  highest  temper  and  quality 
in  stafF-work.  His  memory  for  detail  was  like  a  card- 
index  system,  yet  his  mind  was  not  clogged  with  detail, 
but  saw  the  wood  as  well  as  the  trees,  and  the  whole 
broad  sweep  of  the  problem  which  confronted  him.  There 
was  something  fascinating  as  well  as  terrible  in  his  ex- 
position of  a  battle  that  he  was  planning.  For  the  first 
time  in  his  presence  and  over  his  maps,  I  saw  that  after 
all  there  was  such  a  thing  as  the  science  of  war,  and  that 
it  was  not  always  a  fetish  of  elementary  ideas  raised  to 
the  nth  degree  of  pomposity,  as  I  had  been  led  to  believe 
by  contact  with  other  generals  and  stafF-officers.  Here 
at  least  was  a  man  who  dealt  with  it  as  a  scientific  busi- 
ness, according  to  the  methods  of  science — calculating 
the  weight  and  effect  of  gun-fire,  the  strength  of  the 
enemy's  defenses  and  man-power,  the  psychology  of 
German  generalship  and  of  German  units,  the  pressure 
which  could  be  put  on  British  troops  before  the  breaking- 
point  of  courage,  the  relative  or  cumulative  effects  of 
poison-gas,  mines,  heavy  and  light  artillery,  tanks,  the 
disposition  of  German  guns  and  the  probability  of  their 
movement  in  this  direction  or  that,  the  amount  of  their 
wastage  under  our  counter-battery  work,  the  advantages 
of  attacks  in  depth — one  body  of  troops  "kap-frogging," 
another  in  an  advance  to  further  objectives — the  time- 
table of  transport,  the  supply  of  food  and  Vv^ater  and 
ammunition,  the  comfort  of  troops  before  action,  and  a 
thousand  other  factors  of  success. 

Before  every  battle  fought  by  the  Second  Army,  and 
on  the  eve  of  it.  Sir  John  Harington  sent  for  the  war 
correspondents  and  devoted  an  hour  or  more  to  a  detailed 
explanation  of  his  plans.  He  put  down  all  his  cards  on 
the  table  with  perfect  candor,  hiding  nothing,  neither 
minimizing  nor  exaggerating  the  difficulties  and  dangers 


6o  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

of  the  attack,  pointing  out  the  tactical  obstacles  which 
must  be  overcome  before  any  chance  of  success,  and  ex- 
posing the  general  strategy  in  the  simplest  and  clearest 
speech. 

I  used  to  study  him  at  those  times,  and  marveled  at 
him.  After  intense  and  prolonged  work  at  all  this  detail 
involving  the  lives  of  thousands  of  men,  he  was  highly 
wrought,  w^ith  every  nerve  in  his  body  and  brain  at  full 
tension,  but  he  was  never  flurried,  never  irritable,  never 
depressed  or  elated  by  false  pessimism  or  false  optimism. 
He  was  a  chemist  explaining  the  factors  of  a  great  experi- 
ment of  which  the  result  was  still  uncertain.  He  could 
only  hope  for  certain  results  after  careful  analysis  and 
synthesis.  Yet  he  was  not  dehumanized.  He  laughed 
sometimes  at  surprises  he  had  caused  the  enemy,  or  was 
likely  to  cause  them — surprises  which  would  lead  to  a 
massacre  of  their  men.  He  warmed  to  the  glory  of  the 
courage  of  the  troops  who  were  carrying  out  his  plans. 

"It  depends  on  these  fellov/s,"  he  would  say.  "I  am 
setting  them  a  difficult  job.  If  they  can  do  it,  as  I  hope 
and  believe,  it  will  be  a  fine  achievement.  They  have 
been  very  much  tried,  poor  fellows,  but  their  spirit  is  still 
high,  as  I  know  from  their  commanding  officers." 

One  of  his  ambitions  was  to  break  down  the  prejudice 
between  the  fighting  units  and  the  Staff.  "We  want 
them  to  know  that  we  are  all  working  together,  for  the 
same  purpose  and  with  the  same  zeal.  They  cannot  do 
without  us,  as  we  cannot  do  without  them,  and  I  want 
them  to  feel  that  the  work  done  here  is  to  help  them  to 
do  theirs  more  easily,  with  lighter  losses,  in  better  physical 
conditions,  with  organization  behind  them  at  every  stage." 

Many  times  the  Second  Army  would  not  order  an 
attack  or  decide  the  time  of  it  before  consulting  the  divi- 
sional generals  and  brigadiers,  and  obtaining  their  con- 
sensus of  opinion.  The  officers  and  men  in  the  Second 
Army  did  actually  come  to  acknowledge  the  value  of  the 
staff-work  behind  them,  and  felt  a  confidence  in  its  de- 
votion to  their  interests  which  was  rare  on  the  western  front. 


OBSERVERS  AND  COMMANDERS  6i 

At  the  end  of  one  of  his  expositions  Sir  John  Harington 
would  rise  and  gather  up  his  maps  and  papers,  and  say: 

''Well,  there  you  are,  gentlemen.  You  know  as  much 
as  I  do  about  the  plans  for  to-morrow's  battle.  At  the 
end  of  the  day  you  will  be  able  to  see  the  result  of  all  our 
work  and  tell  me  things  I  do  not  know." 

Those  conferences  took  place  in  the  Second  Army  head- 
quarters on  Cassel  Hill,  in  a  big  building  which  was  a 
casino  before  the  waT,  with  a  far-reaching  view  across 
Flanders,  so  that  one  could  see  in  the  distance  the  whole 
sweep  of  the  Ypres  salient,  and  southward  the  country 
below  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette,  with  Merville  and  Haze- 
brouck  in  the  foreground.  Often  we  assembled  in  a  glass 
house,  furnished  with  trestle  tables  on  which  maps  were 
spread,  and,  thinking  back  to  these  scenes,  I  remember 
now,  as  I  write,  the  noise  of  rain  beating  on  that  glass 
roof,  and  the  clammy  touch  of  fog  on  the  window-panes 
stealing  through  the  cracks  and  creeping  into  the  room. 
The  meteorologist  of  the  Second  Army  was  often  a  gloomy 
prophet,  and  his  prophecies  were  right.  How  it  rained 
on  nights  when  hundreds  of  thousands  of  British  soldiers 
were  waiting  in  their  trenches  to  attack  in  a  murky  dawn! 
.  .  .  We  said  good  night  to  General  Harington,  each  one 
of  us,  I  think,  excited  by  the  thought  of  the  drama  of 
human  life  and  death  which  we  had  heard  in  advance  in 
that  glass  house  on  the  hill;  to  be  played  out  by  flesh 
and  blood  before  many  hours  had  passed.  A  kind  of 
sickness  took  possession  of  my  soul  when  I  stumbled  down 
the  rock  path  from  those  headquarters  in  pitch  darkness, 
over  slabs  of  stones  designed  by  a  casino  architect  to 
break  one's  neck,  with  the  rain  dribbling  down  one's  col- 
lar, and,  far  away,  watery  lights  in  the  sky,  of  gun-flashes 
and  ammunition-dumps  afire,  and  the  noise  of  artillery 
thudding  in  dull,  crumbling  shocks.  We  were  starting 
early  to  see  the  opening  of  the  battle  and  its  backwash. 
There  would  be  more  streams  of  bloody,  muddy  men, 
more  crowds  of  miserable  prisoners,  more  dead  bodies 
lying  in  the  rnuck  of  captured  ground,  more  shells  plung- 


62  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ing  into  the  wet  earth  and  throwing  up  columns  of  smoke 
and  mud,  more  dead  horses,  disemboweled,  and  another 
victory  at  fearful  cost,  over  one  of  the  Flanders  ridges. 

Curses  and  prayers  surged  up  in  my  heart.  How  long 
was  this  to  go  on — this  massacre  of  youth,  this  agony  of 
men?  Was  there  no  sanity  left  in  the  world  that  could 
settle  the  argument  by  other  means  than  this.^*  When 
we  had  taken  that  ridge  to-morrow  there  would  be  another 
to  take,  and  another.  And  what  then?  Had  we  such 
endless  reserves  of  men  that  we  could  go  on  gaining  ground 
at  such  a  price?  Was  it  to  be  extermination  on  both 
sides?  The  end  of  civilization  itself ?  General  Harington 
had  said:  *'The  enemy  is  still  very  strong.  He  has  plenty 
of  reserves  on  hand  and  he  is  fighting  hard.  It  won't  be 
a  walk-over  to-morrow." 

As  an  onlooker  I  was  overwhelmed  by  the  full  measure 
of  all  this  tragic  drama.  The  vastness  and  the  duration 
of  its  horror  appalled  me.  I  went  to  my  billet  in  an  old 
monastery,  and  sat  there  in  the  darkness,  my  window 
gHmmering  with  the  faint  glow  of  distant  shell-flashes, 
and  said,  "O  God,  give  us  victory  to-morrow,  if  that  may 
help  us  to  the  end."  Then  to  bed,  without  undressing. 
There  was  an  early  start  before  the  dawn.  Major  Lytton 
would  be  with  me.  He  had  a  gallant  look  along  the 
duckboards.  ...  Or  Montague — white-haired  Montague, 
who  Hked  to  gain  a  far  objective,  whatever  the  risk,  and 
gave  one  a  little  courage  by  his  apparent  fearlessness.  I 
had  no  courage  on  those  early  mornings  of  battle.  All 
that  I  had,  which  was  little,  oozed  out  of  me  when  we 
came  to  the  first  dead  horses  and  the  first  dead  men,  and 
passed  the  tumult  of  our  guns  firing  out  of  the  mud,  and 
heard  the  scream  of  shells.  I  hated  it  all  with  a  cold 
hatred;  and  I  went  on  hating  it  for  years  that  seem  a 
lifetime.  I  was  not  alone  in  that  hatred,  and  other  men 
had  greater  cause,  though  it  was  for  their  sake  that  I 
suffered  most,  as  an  observer  of  their  drama  of  death. 
...  As  observers  we  saw  most  of  the  grisly  game. 


Part  Two 

THE    SCHOOL 
OF  COURAGE 


EARLY  DAYS  WITH  THE  NEW  ARMY 


Y  the  time  stationary  warfare  had  been  established 
on  the  western  front  in  trench  Hnes  from  the  sea  to 
Switzerland,  the  British  Regular  Army  had  withered 
away.  That  was  after  the  retreat  from  Mons,  the  vic- 
tory of  the  Marne,  the  early  battles  round  Ypres,  and  the 
slaughter  at  Neuve  Chapelle.  The  "Old  Contemptibles" 
were  an  army  of  ghosts  whose  dead  clay  was  under  earth 
in  many  fields  of  France,  but  whose  spirit  still  "carried 
on"  as  an  heroic  tradition  to  those  who  came  after  them 
into  those  same  fields,  to  the  same  fate.  The  only  sur- 
vivors were  Regular  officers  taken  out  of  the  fighting-lines 
to  form  the  staffs  of  new  divisions  and  to  train  the  army 
of  volunteers  now  being  raised  at  home,  and  men  who 
were  recovering  from  wounds  or  serving  behind  the  lines: 
those,  and  non-commissioned  officers  who  were  the  best 
schoolmasters  of  the  new  boys,  the  best  friends  and  guides 
of  the  new  officers,  stubborn  in  their  courage,  hard  and 
ruthless  in  their  discipline,  foul-mouthed  according  to 
their  own  traditions,  until  they,  too,  fell  in  the  shambles. 
It  was  in  March  of  191 5  that  a  lieutenant-colonel  in  the 
trenches  said  to  me:  "I  am  one  out  of  150  Regular  officers 
still  serving  with  their  battalions.  That  is  to  say,  there 
are  150  of  us  left  in  the  fighting-Hnes  out  of  1,500." 

That  little  Regular  Army  of  ours  had  justified  its  pride 
in  a  long  history  of  fighting  courage.  It  had  helped  to 
save  England  and  France  by  its  own  death.  Those  boys 
of  ours  whom  I  had  seen  in  the  first  August  of  the  war, 
landing  at  Boulogne  and  marching,  as  though  to  a  festi- 
val, toward  the  enemy,  with  French  girls  kissing  them 


66  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

and  loading  them  with  fruit  and  flowers,  had  proved  the 
quahty  of  their  spirit  and  training.  As  riflemen  they  had 
stupefied  the  enemy,  brought  to  a  sudden  check  by  forces 
they  had  despised.  They  held  their  fire  until  the  German 
ranks  were  within  eight  hundred  yards  of  them,  and  then 
mowed  them  down  as  though  by  machine-gun  fire — before 
we  had  machine-guns,  except  as  rare  specimens,  here  and 
there.  Our  horse  artillery  was  beyond  any  doubt  the 
best  in  the  world  at  that  time.  Even  before  peace  came 
German  generals  paid  ungrudging  tributes  to  the  efiniciency 
of  our  Regular  Army,  writing  down  in  their  histories  of 
war  that  this  was  the  model  of  all  armies,  the  most  per- 
fectly trained.  ...  It  was  spent  by  the  spring  of  '15.  Its 
memory  remains  as  the  last  epic  of  those  professional 
soldiers  who,  through  centuries  of  English  history,  took 
"the  King's  shilhng"  and  fought  when  they  were  told  to 
fight,  and  left  their  bones  in  far  places  of  the  world  and 
in  many  fields  in  Europe,  and  won  for  the  British  soldier 
universal  fame  as  a  terrible  warrior.  There  will  never  be 
a  Regular  Army  like  that.  Modern  warfare  has  opened 
the  arena  to  the  multitude.  They  may  no  longer  sit  in 
the  Coliseum  watching  the  paid  gladiators.  If  there  be 
war  they  must  take  their  share  of  its  sacrifice.  They  must 
be  victims  as  well  as  victors.  They  must  pay  for  the 
luxury  of  conquest,  hatred,  and  revenge  by  their  own 
bodies,  and  for  their  safety  against  aggression  by  national 
service. 

After  the  first  quick  phases  of  the  war  this  need  of 
national  soldiers  to  replace  the  professional  forces  became 
clear  to  the  military  leaders.  The  Territorials  who  had 
been  raised  for  home  defense  were  sent  out  to  fill  up  the 
gaps,  and  their  elementary  training  was  shown  to  be  good 
enough,  as  a  beginning,  in  the  fighting-lines.  The  courage 
of  those  Territorial  divisions  who  came  out  first  to  France 
was  quickly  proved,  and  soon  put  to  the  supreme  test,  in 
which  they  did  not  fail.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end 
these  men,  who  had  made  a  game  of  soldiering  in  days  of 
peace,  yet  a  serious  game  to  which  they  had  devoted  much 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  67 

of  their  spare  time  after  working-hours,  were  splendid 
beyond  all  words  of  praise,  and  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end  the  Territorial  officers — men  of  good  standing  in  their 
counties,  men  of  brain  and  business  training — were  handi- 
capped by  lack  of  promotion  and  treated  with  contempt 
by  the  High  Command,  who  gave  preference  always  to 
the  Regular  officers  in  every  staff  appointment. 

This  was  natural  and  inevitable  in  armies  controlled 
by  the  old  Regular  school  of  service  and  tradition.  As  a 
close  corporation  in  command  of  the  machine,  it  was  not 
within  their  nature  or  philosophy  to  make  way  for  the 
new  type.  The  Staff  College  was  jealous  of  its  own. 
Sandhurst  and  Woolwich  were  still  the  only  schools  ot 
soldiering  recognized  as  giving  the  right  "tone"  to  officers 
and  gentlemen  fit  for  high  appointment.  The  cavalry, 
above  all,  held  the  power  of  supreme  command  in  a  war 
of  machines  and  chemistry  and  national  psychology.  .  .  . 

I  should  hate  to  attack  the  Regular  officer.  His  caste 
belonged  to  the  best  of  our  blood.  He  was  the  heir  to 
fine  old  traditions  of  courage  and  leadership  in  battle. 
He  was  a  gentleman  whose  touch  of  arrogance  was  sub- 
ject to  a  rigid  code  of  honor  which  made  him  look  to  the 
comfort  of  his  men  first,  to  the  health  of  his  horse  second, 
to  his  own  physical  needs  last.  He  had  the  stern  sense 
of  justice  of  a  Roman  Centurian,  and  his  men  knew  that 
though  he  would  not  spare  them  punishment  if  guilty,  he 
would  give  them  always  a  fair  hearing,  with  a  point  in 
their  favor,  if  possible.  It  was  in  their  code  to  take  the 
greatest  risk  in  time  of  danger,  to  be  scornful  of  death  in 
the  face  of  their  men  whatever  secret  fear  they  had,  and 
to  be  proud  and  jealous  of  the  honor  of  the  regiment.  In 
action  men  found  them  good  to  follow — better  than  some 
of  the  young  officers  of  the  New  Army,  who  had  not  the 
same  traditional  pride  nor  the  same  instinct  for  command 
nor  the  same  consideration  for  their  men,  though  more 
easy-going  and  human  in  sympathy. 

So  I  salute  in  spirit  those  battalion  officers  of  the  Old 
Army  who  fulfilled  their  heritage  until  it  was  overwhelmed 


68  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

by  new  forces,  and  I  find  extenuating  circumstances  even 
in  remembrance  of  the  high  stupidities,  the  narrow  imag- 
ination, the  deep,  impregnable,  intolerant  ignorance  of 
Staff  College  men  who  with  their  red  tape  and  their 
general  orders  were  the  inquisitors  and  torturers  of  the 
new  armies.  Tout  comprendre  c'est  tout  pardonner.  They 
were  molded  in  an  old  system,  and  could  not  change  their 
cliche. 

II 

The  New  Army  was  called  into  being  by  Lord  Kitchener 
and  his  advisers,  who  adopted  modern  advertising 
methods  to  stir  the  sluggish 'imagination  of  the  masses, 
so  that  every  wall  in  London  and  great  cities,  every  fence 
in  rural  places,  was  placarded  with  picture-posters. 

.  .  .  "What  did  you  do  in  the  Great  War,  Daddy?"  .  .  . 
"What  will  your  best  girl  say  if  you're  not  in  khaki?" 

Those  were  vulgar  appeals  which,  no  doubt,  stirred 
many  simple  souls,  and  so  were  good  enough.  It  would 
have  been  better  to  let  the  people  know  more  of  the  truth 
of  what  was  happening  in  France  and  Flanders — the  truth 
of  tragedy,  instead  of  carefully  camouflaged  communiques y 
hiding  the  losses,  ignoring  the  deeds  of  famous  regiments, 
veiling  all  the  drama  of  that  early  fighting  by  a  deliberate 
screen  of  mystery,  though  all  was  known  to  the  enemy. 
It  was  fear  of  their  own  people,  not  of  the  enemy,  which 
guided  the  rules  of  censorship  then  and  later. 

For  some  little  time  the  British  people  did  not  under- 
stand what  was  happening.  How  could  they  know?  It 
appeared  that  all  was  going  well.  Then  why  worry? 
Soon  there  would  be  the  joy-bells  of  peace,  and  the  boys 
would  come  marching  home  again,  as  in  earlier  wars.  It 
was  only  very  slowly— because  of  the  conspiracy  of  silence 
— that  there  crept  into  the  consciousness  of  our  people  the 
dim  realization  of  a  desperate  struggle  ahead,  in  which 
all  their  young  manhood  would  be  needed  to  save  France 
and  Belgium,  and — dear  God! — England  herself.  It  was 
as  that  thought  touched  one  mind  and  another  that  the 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  69 

recruiting  offices  were  crowded  with  young  men.  Some  of 
them  offered  their  bodies  because  of  the  promise  of  a  great 
adventure— and  Hfe  had  been  rather  dull  in  office  and  fac- 
tory and  on  the  farm.  Something  stirred  in  their  blood 
— an  old  call  to  youth.  Some  instinct  of  a  primitive,  sav- 
age kind,  for  open-air  life,  fighting,  kilhng,  the  comrade- 
ship of  hunters,  violent  emotions,  the  chance  of  death, 
surged  up  into  the  brains  of  quiet  boys,  clerks,  mechanics, 
miners,  factory  hands.  It  was  the  call  of  the  wild — the 
hark-back  of  the  mind  to  the  old  barbarities  of  the  world's 
dawn,  which  is  in  the  embryo  of  modern  man.  The 
shock  of  anger  at  frightful  tales  from  Belgium — little 
children  with  their  hands  cut  off  (no  evidence  for  that 
one);  women  foully  outraged;  civilians  shot  in  cold  blood 
— sent  many  men  at  a  quick  pace  to  the  recruiting  agents. 
Others  were  sent  there  by  the  taunt  of  a  girl,  or  the  sneer 
of  a  comrade  in  khaki,  or  the  straight,  steady  look  in  the 
eyes  of  a  father  who  said,  ''What  about  it,  Dick.^  .  .  .  The 
old  countr}^  is  up  against  it."  It  was  that  last  thought 
which  worked  in  the  brain  of  England's  manhood.  That 
was  his  real  call,  which  whispered  to  men  at  the  plow 
— quiet,  ruminating  lads,  the  peasant  type,  the  yeoman — • 
and  excited  undergraduates  in  their  rooms  at  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  and  the  masters  of  public  schools,  and  all 
manner  of  young  men,  and  some,  as  I  know,  old  in  years 
but  young  in  heart.  "The  old  country  is  in  danger!" 
The  shadow  of  a  menace  was  creeping  over  some  little 
patch  of  England — or  of  Scotland. 

"Fs  best  be  going,"  said  the  village  boy. 

"'Dulce  et  decorum  est — '"  said  the  undergraduate. 

"I  hate  the  idea,  but  it's  got  to  be  done,"  said  the  city- 
bred  man. 

So  they  disappeared  from  their  familiar  haunts — more 
and  more  of  them  as  the  months  passed.  They  were  put 
into  training-camps,  "pigged"  it  on  dirty  straw  in  dirty 
barns,  were  ill-fed  and  ill-equipped,  and  trained  by  hard- 
mouthed  sergeants — tyrants  and  bullies  in  a  good  cause 
— until  they  became  automata  at  the  word  of  command, 


70  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

lost  their  souls,  as  it  seemed,  in  that  grinding-machine  of 
military  training,  and  cursed  their  fate.  Only  comrade- 
ship helped  tliem — not  always  jolly,  if  they  happened  to 
be  a  class  above  their  fellows,  a  moral  peg  above  foul- 
mouthed  slum-dwellers  and  men  of  filthy  habits,  but 
splendid  if  they  were  in  their  own  crowd  of  decent,  laugh- 
ter-loving, companionable  lads.  Eleven  months'  training! 
Were  they  ever  going  to  the  front  .^  The  war  would  be 
over  before  they  landed  in  France.  .  .  .  Then,  at  last,  they 
came. 

Ill 

It  was  not  until  July  of  191 5  that  the  Commander-in- 
Chief  announced  that  a  part  of  the  New  Army  was  in 
France,  and  lifted  the  veil  from  the  secret  which  had 
mystified  people  at  home  whose  boys  had  gone  from  them, 
but  who  could  not  get  a  word  of  their  doings  in  France. 

I  saw  the  first  of  the  "Kitchener  men,"  as  we  called 
them  then.  The  tramp  of  their  feet  in  a  steady  scrunch, 
scrunch,  along  a  gritty  road  of  France,  passed  the  window 
of  my  billet  very  early  in  the  mornings,  and  I  poked  my 
head  out  to  get  another  glimpse  of  those  lads  marching 
forward  to  the  firing-line.  For  as  long  as  history  lasts 
the  imagination  of  our  people  will  strive  to  conjure  up 
the  vision  of  those  boys  who,  in  the  year  of  191 5,  went  out 
to  Flanders,  not  as  conscript  soldiers,  but  as  volunteers, 
for  the  old  country's  sake,  to  take  their  risks  and  "do  their 
bit"  in  the  world's  bloodiest  war.  I  saw  those  fellows 
day  by  day,  touched  hands  with  them,  went  into  the 
trenches  with  them,  heard  their  first  tales,  and  strolled 
into  their  billets  when  they  had  shaken  down  for  a  night 
or  two  within  sound  of  the  guns.  History  will  envy  me 
that,  this  living  touch  with  the  men  who,  beyond  any 
doubt,  did  in  their  simple  way  act  and  suffer  things  before 
the  war  ended  which  revealed  new  wonders  of  human 
courage  and  endurance.  Some  people  envied  me  then — 
those  people  at  home  to  whom  those  boys  belonged,  and 
who  in  country  towns  and  villages  and  suburban  houses 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  71 

would  have  given  their  hearts  to  get  one  look  at  them 
there  in  Flanders  and  to  see  the  way  of  their  life.  .  .  . 
How  were  they  living?  How  did  they  like  it?  How  were 
they  sleeping?  What  did  the  Regulars  think  of  the  New 
Army  ? 

**0h,  a  very  cheerful  lot,"  said  a  sergeant-major  of  the 
old  Regular  type,  who  was  having  a  quiet  pipe  over  a  half- 
penny paper  in  a  shed  at  the  back  of  some  farm  buildings 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Armentieres,  which  had  been 
plugged  by  two  hundred  German  shells  that  time  the  day 
before.  (One  never  knev/  when  the  fellows  on  the  other 
side  would  take  it  into  their  heads  to  empty  their  guns 
that  way.  They  had  already  killed  a  lot  of  civilians 
thereabouts,  but  the  others  stayed  on.) 

"Not  a  bit  of  trouble  with  them,"  said  the  sergeant- 
major,  "and  all  as  keen  as  when  they  grinned  into  a  re- 
cruitmg  office  and  said,  Tm  going.'  They're  glad  to  be 
out.  Over-trained,  some  of  'em.  For  ten  months  we've 
been  working  'em  pretty  hard.  Had  to,  but  they  were 
wilHng  enough.  Now  you  couldn't  find  a  better  battalion, 
though  some  more  famous.  .  .  .  Till  we  get  our  chance, 
you  know." 

He  pointed  with  the  stem  of  his  pipe  to  the  open  door 
of  an  old  barn,  where  a  party  of  his  men  were  resting. 

"You'll  find  plenty  of  hot  heads  among  them,  but  no 
cold  feet.     I'll  bet  on  that." 

The  men  were  lying  on  a  stone  floor  with  haversacks  for 
pillows,  or  squatting  tailor-wise,  writing  letters  home. 
From  a  far  corner  came  a  whistHng  trio,  harmonized  in  a 
tune  which  for  some  reason  made  me  think  of  hayfields 
in  southern  England. 

They  belonged  to  a  Sussex  battalion,  and  I  said,  "Any 
one  here  from  Burpham?" 

One  of  the  boys  sat  up,  stared,  flushed  to  the  roots  of 
his  yellow  hair,  and  said,  "Yes." 

I  spoke  to  him  of  people  I  knew  there,  and  he  was 
astonished  that  I  should  know  them.  Distressed  also  in 
a  queer  way.     Those  memories  of  a  Sussex  village  seemed 


72  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

to  break  down  some  of  the  hardness  in  which  he  had 
cased  himself.  I  could  see  a  frightful  homesickness  in  his 
blue  eyes. 

"P'raps  I've  seed  the  last  o'  Burpham,"  he  said  in  a 
kind  of  whisper,  so  that  the  other  men  should  not  hear. 

The  other  men  were  from  Arundel,  Littlehampton,  and 
Sussex  villages.  They  were  of  Saxon  breed.  There  was 
hardly  a  difference  between  them  and  some  German  pris- 
oners I  saw,  yellow-haired  as  they  were,  with  fair, 
freckled,  sun-baked  skins.  They  told  me  they  were  glad 
to  be  out  in  France.  Anything  was  better  than  training 
at  home. 

"I  like  Germans  more  'n  sergeant-majors,"  said  one 
young  yokel,  and  the  others  shouted  with  laughter  at  his 
jest. 

"Perhaps  you  haven't  met  the  German  sergeants,"  I 
said. 

"I've  met  our'n,"  said  the  Sussex  boy.  "A  man's  a 
fool  to  be  a  soldier.     Eh,  lads?" 

They  agreed  heartily,  though  they  were  all  volunteers. 

"Not  that  we're  skeered,"  said  one  of  them.  "We'll 
be  glad  when  the  fighting  begins." 

"Speak  for  yourself,  Dick  Meekcombe,  and  don't  for- 
get the  shells  last  night." 

There  was  another  roar  of  laughter.  Those  boys  of 
the  South  Saxons  were  full  of  spirit.  In  their  yokel  way 
they  were  disguising  their  real  thoughts — their  fear  of 
being  afraid,  their  hatred  of  the  thought  of  death — very 
close  to  them  now — and  their  sense  of  strangeness  in  this 
scene  on  the  edge  of  Armentieres,  a  world  away  from  their 
old  life. 

The  colonel  sat  in  a  little  room  at  headquarters,  a 
bronzed  man  with  a  grizzled  mustache  and  light-blue 
eyes,  with  a  fine  tenderness  in  his  smile. 

"These  boys  of  mine  are  all  right,"  he  said.  "They're 
dear  fellows,  and  ready  for  anything.  Of  course,  it  was 
anxious  work  at  first,  but  my  N.  C.  O.'s  are  a  first-class 
lot,  and  we're  ready  for  business." 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  73 

He  spoke  of  the  recruiting  task  which  had  begun  the 
business  eleven  months  ago.  It  had  not  been  easy,  among 
all  those  scattered  villages  of  the  southern  county.  He 
had  gone  hunting  among  the  farms  and  cottages  for  likely 
young  fellows.  They  were  of  good  class,  and  he  had 
picked  the  lads  of  intelligence,  and  weeded  out  the  others. 
They  came  from  a  good  stock — the  yeoman  breed.  One 
could  not  ask  for  better  stuff.  The  officers  were  men  of 
old  county  famihes,  and  they  knew  their  men.  That  was 
a  great  thing.  So  far  they  had  been  very  lucky  with 
regard  to  casualties,  though  it  was  unfortunate  that  a 
company  commander,  a  fine  fellow  who  had  been  a  school- 
master and  a  parson,  should  have  been  picked  off  by  a 
sniper  on  his  first  day  out. 

The  New  Army  had  received  its  baptism  of  fire,  though 
nothing  very  fierce  as  yet.  They  were  led  on  in  easy 
stages  to  the  danger-zone.  It  was  not  fair  to  plunge 
them  straight  away  into  the  bad  places.  But  the  test  of 
steadiness  was  good  enough  on  a  dark  night  behind  the 
reserve  trenches,  when  the  reliefs  had  gone  up,  and  there 
was  a  bit  of  digging  to  do  in  the  open. 

"Quiet  there,  boys,"  said  the  sergeant-major.  "And 
no  larks." 

It  was  not  a  larky  kind  of  place  or  time.  There  was  no 
moon,  and  a  light  drizzle  of  rain  fell.  The  enemy's 
trenches  were  about  a  thousand  yards  away,  and  their 
guns  were  busy  in  the  night,  so  that  the  shells  came  over- 
head, and  lads  who  had  heard  the  owls  hoot  in  English 
woods  now  heard  stranger  night-birds  crying  through  the 
air,  with  the  noise  of  rushing  wings,  ending  in  a  thunder- 
clap. 

"And  my  old  mother  thinks  I'm  enjoying  myself!"  said 
the  heir  to  a  seaside  lodging-house. 

"Thirsty  work,  this  grave-digging  job,"  said  a  lad  who 
used  to  skate  on  rollers  between  the  bath-chairs  of 
Brighton  promenade. 

"Can't  see  much  in  those  shells,"  said  a  young  man 
who  once  sold  ladies'  blouses  in  an  emporium  of  a  south 


74  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

coast  village.  "How  those  newspaper  chaps  do  try  to 
frighten  us!" 

He  put  his  head  on  one  side  with  a  sudden  jerk. 

"What's  that?     Wasps?" 

A  number  of  insects  were  flying  overhead  with  a  queer, 
sibilant  noise.  Somewhere  in  the  darkness  there  was  a 
steady  rattle  in  the  throat  of  a  beast. 

"What's  that,  Sergeant?" 

"Machine-guns,  my  child.  Keep  your  head  down,  or 
you'll  lose  hold  of  it.  .  .  .  Steady,  there.  Don't  get  jumpy, 
now! 

The  machine-gun  was  firing  too  high  to  do  any  serious 
damage.  It  was  probably  a  ricochet  from  a  broken  tree 
which  made  one  of  the  boys  suddenly  drop  his  spade  and 
fall  over  it  in  a  crumpled  way. 

"Get  up,  Charlie,"  said  the  comrade  next  to  him;  and 
then,  in  a  scared  voice,  "Oh,  Sergeant!" 

"That's  all  right,"  said  the  sergeant-major.  "We're 
getting  off  very  lightly.  Now  remember  what  I've  been 
telling  you.  .  .  .  Stretcher  this  way." 

They  were  very  steady  through  the  night,  this  first 
company  of  the  New  Army. 

"Like  old  soldiers,  sir,"  said  the  sergeant-major,  when 
he  stood  chatting  with  the  colonel  after  breakfast. 

It  was  a  bit  of  bad  luck — though  not  very  bad,  after  all 
• — which  made  the  Germans  shell  a  hamlet  into  which  I 
went  just  as  some  of  the  New  Army  were  marching  through 
to  their  quarters.  These  men  had  already  seen  what  shell- 
fire  could  do  to  knock  the  beauty  out  of  old  houses  and 
quiet  streets.  They  had  gone  tramping  through  one  or 
two  villages  to  which  the  enemy's  guns  had  turned  their 
attention,  and  had  received  that  unforgetable  sensation 
of  one's  first  sight  of  roofless  cottages,  and  great  gaps  in 
garden  walls,  and  tall  houses  which  have  tumbled  inside 
themselves.  But  now  they  saw  this  destruction  in  the 
process,  and  stood  very  still,  listening  to  the  infernal 
clatter  as  shells  burst  at  the  other  end  of  the  street, 
tumbling  down  huge  masses  of  masonry  and   plugging 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  75 

holes  into  neat  cottages,  and  tearing  great  gashes  out  of 
red-brick  walls. 

"Funny  business!"  said  one  of  the  boys. 

"Regular  Drury  Lane  melodrama,"  said  another. 

"Looks  as  if  some  of  us  wouldn't  be  home  in  time  for 
lunch,"  was  another  comment,  greeted  by  a  guffaw  along 
the  line. 

They  tried  to  see  the  humor  of  it,  though  there  was  a 
false  note  in  some  of  the  jokes.  But  it  was  the  heroic 
falsity  of  boys  whose  pride  is  stronger  than  their  fear,  that 
inevitable  fear  which  chills  one  when  this  beastliness  is 
being  done. 

"Not  a  single  casualty,"  said  one  of  the  officers  when 
the  storm  of  shells  ended  with  a  few  last  concussions  and  a 
rumble  of  falhng  bricks.   "Anything  wrong  with  our  luck  ? " 

Everything  was  all  right  with  the  luck  of  this  battalion 
of  the  New  Army  in  its  first  experience  of  war  on  the  first 
night  in  the  danger-zone.  No  damage  was  done  even 
when  two  shells  came  into  one  of  their  billets,  where  a 
number  of  men  were  sleeping  after  a  hard  day  and  a  long 
march. 

"I  woke  up  pretty  quick,"  said  one  of  them,  "and 
thought  the  house  had  fallen  in.  I  was  out  of  it  before 
the  second  came.  Then  I  laughed.  I'm  a  heavy  sleeper, 
you  know.  [He  spoke  as  if  I  knew  his  weakness.]  My 
mother  bought  me  an  alarm-clock  last  birthday.  'Per- 
haps you'll  be  down  for  breakfast  now,'  she  said.  But 
a  shell  is  better — as  a  knocker-up.  I  didn't  stop  to  dress." 

Death  had  missed  him  by  a  foot  or  two,  but  he  laughed 
at  the  fluke  of  his  escape. 

"K.'s  men"  had  not  forgotten  how  to  laugh  after  those 
eleven  months  of  hard  training,  and  they  found  a  joke  in 
grisly  things  which  do  not  appeal  humorously  to  sensitive 
men. 

"Any  room  for  us  there?"  asked  one  of  these  bronzed 
fellows  as  he  marched  with  his  battalion  past  a  cemetery 
where  the  fantastic  devices  of  French  graves  rose  above 
the  churchyard  wall, 


76  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

*'0h,  we'll  do  all  right  in  the  open  air,  all  along  of  the 
German  trenches,"  was  the  answer  he  had  from  the  lad 
at  his  side.     They  grinned  at  their  own  wit. 

IV 

I  did  not  find  any  self-conscious  patriotism  among  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  New  Army.  The  word  itself  meant 
nothing  to  them.  Unlike  the  French  soldier,  to  whom 
patriotism  is  a  religion  and  who  has  the  name  of  France 
on  his  lips  at  the  moment  of  peril,  our  men  were  silent 
about  the  reasons  for  their  coming  out  and  the  cause  for 
which  they  risked  their  lives.  It  was  not  for  imperial 
power.  Any  illusion  to  *'The  Empire"  left  them  stone- 
cold  unless  they  confused  it  with  the  Empire  Music  Hall, 
when  their  hearts  warmed  to  the  name.  It  was  not 
because  they  hated  Germans,  because  after  a  few  turns 
in  the  trenches  many  of  them  had  a  fellow-feeling  for  the 
poor  devils  over  the  way,  and  to  the  end  of  the  war 
treated  any  prisoners  they  took  (after  the  killing  in  hot 
blood)  like  pet  monkeys  or  tame  bears.  But  for  stringent 
regulations  they  would  have  fraternized  with  the  enemy 
at  the  slightest  excuse,  and  did  so  in  the  winter  of  1914, 
to  the  great  scandal  of  G.  H.  Q.  "What's  patriotism.?" 
asked  a  boy  of  me,  in  Ypres,  and  there  was  hard  scorn  in 
his  voice.  Yet  the  love  of  the  old  country  was  deep  down 
in  the  roots  of  their  hearts,  and,  as  with  a  boy  who  came 
from  the  village  where  I  lived  for  a  time,  the  name  of  some 
such  place  held  all  the  meaning  of  life  to  many  of  them. 
The  simple  minds  of  country  boys  clung  fast  to  that,  went 
back  in  waking  dreams  to  dwell  in  a  cottage  parlor  where 
their  parents  sat,  and  an  old  clock  ticked,  and  a  dog  slept 
with  its  head  on  its  paws.  The  smell  of  the  fields  and  the 
barns,  the  friendship  of  familiar  trees,  the  heritage  that 
was  in  their  blood  from  old  yeoman  ancestry,  touched 
them  with  the  spirit  of  England,  and  it  was  because  of 
that  they  fought. 

The  London  lad  was  more  self-conscious,  had  a  more 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  77 

glib  way  of  expressing  his  convictions,  but  even  he  hid 
his  purpose  in  the  war  under  a  covering  of  irony  and 
cynical  jests.  It  was  the  spirit  of  the  old  city  and  the 
pride  of  it  which  helped  him  to  suffer,  and  in  his  day- 
dreams was  the  clanging  of  'buses  from  Charing  Cross  to 
the  Bank,  the  lights  of  the  embankment  reflected  in  the 
dark  river,  the  back  yard  where  he  had  kept  his  bicycle, 
or  the  suburban  garden  where  he  had  watered  his 
mother's  plants.  .  .  .  London!  Good  old  London!  .  .  . 
His  heart  ached  for  it  som.etimes  when,  as  sentry,  he 
stared  across  the  parapet  to  the  barbed  wire  in  No  Man's 
Land. 

One  night,  strolling  outside  my  own  billet  and  wander- 
ing down  the  lane  a  way,  I  heard  the  sound  of  singing 
coming  from  a  big  brick  barn  on  the  roadside.  I  stood 
close  under  the  blank  wall  at  the  back  of  the  building, 
and  listened.  The  men  were  singing  "Auld  Lang  Syne" 
to  the  accompaniment  of  a  concertina  and  a  mouth-organ. 
They  were  taking  parts,  and  the  old  tune — so  strange  to 
hear  out  in  a  village  of  France,  in  the  war  zone — sounded 
very  well,  with  deep-throated  harmonies.  Presently  the 
concertina  changed  its  tune,  and  the  men  of  the  New  Army 
sang  "God  Save  the  King."  I  heard  it  sung  a  thousand 
times  or  more  on  royal  festivals  and  tours,  but  listening 
to  it  then  from  that  dark  old  barn  in  Flanders,  where  a 
number  of  "K.'s  men"  lay  on  the  straw  a  night  or  two 
away  from  the  ordeal  of  advanced  trenches,  in  which  they 
had  to  take  their  turn,  I  heard  it  with  more  emotion  than 
ever  before.  In  that  anthem,  chanted  by  these  boys  in 
the  darkness,  was  the  spirit  of  England.  If  I  had  been 
king,  like  that  Karry  who  wandered  round  the  camp  of 
Agincourt,  where  his  men  lay  sleeping,  I  should  have 
been  glad  to  stand  and  listen  outside  that  barn  and  hear 
those  words: 

Send  him  victorious, 
Happy  and  glorious. 


7S  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

As  the  chief  of  the  British  tribes,  the  fifth  George  received 
his  tribute  from  those  warrior  boys  who  had  come  out  to 
fight  for  the  flag  that  meant  to  them  some  old  village  on 
the  Sussex  Downs,  where  a  mother  and  a  sweetheart 
waited,  or  some  town  in  the  Midlands  where  the  walls 
were  placarded  with  posters  which  made  the  Germans 
gibe,  or  old  London,  where  the  'buses  went  clanging  down 
the  Strand. 

As  I  went  back  up  the  lane  a  dark  figure  loomed  out, 
and  I  heard  the  click  of  a  rifle-bolt.  It  was  one  of  K.'s 
men,  standing  sentry  outside  the  camp. 

"Who  goes  there?" 

It  was  a  cockney  voice. 

*Triends." 

'Tass,  friends.     All's,  well." 

Yes,  all  was  well  then,  as  far  as  human  courage  and  the 
spirit  of  a  splendid  youthfulness  counted  in  that  war  of 
high  explosives  and  destructive  chemistry.  The  fighting 
in  front  of  these  lads  of  the  New  Army  decided  the  fate 
of  the  world,  and  it  was  the  valor  of  those  young  soldiers 
who,  in  a  little  while,  were  flung  into  hell-fires  and  killed 
in  great  numbers,  which  made  all  things  diff'erent  in  the 
philosophy  of  modern  life.  That  concertina  in  the  barn 
was  playing  the  music  of  an  epic  which  will  make  those 
who  sang  it  seem  like  heroes  of  mythology  to  the  future 
race  which  will  read  of  this  death-struggle  in  Europe. 
Yet  it  was  a  cockney,  perhaps  from  Clapham  Junction  or 
Peckham  Rye,  who  said,  like  a  voice  of  Fate,  "All's  well." 


When  the  New  Army  first  came  out  to  learn  their  lessons 
in  the  trenches  in  the  long  days  before  open  warfare,  the 
enemy  had  the  best  of  it  in  every  way.  In  gunpowder 
and  in  supplies  of  ammunition  he  was  our  master  all  along 
the  line,  and  made  use  of  his  mastery  by  flinging  over 
large  numbers  of  shells,  of  all  sizes  and  types,  which 
caused  a  heavy  toll  in  casualties  to  us;  while  our  gunners 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  79 

were  strictly  limited  to  a  few  rounds  a  day,  and  cursed 
bitterly  because  they  could  not  "answer  back."  In 
March  of  191 5  I  saw  the  first  fifteen-inch  howitzer  open 
fire.  We  called  this  monster  "grandma,"  and  there  was 
a  little  group  of  generals  on  the  Scherpenberg,  near  Kem- 
mel,  to  see  the  effect  of  the  first  shell.  Its  target  was  on 
the  lower  slope  of  the  Wytschaete  Ridge,  where  some 
trenches  were  to  be  attacked  for  reasons  only  known  by 
our  generals  and  by  God.  Preliminary  to  the  attack  our 
field-guns  opened  fire  with  shrapnel,  which  scattered  over 
the  German  trenches — their  formidable  earthworks  with 
deep,  shell-proof  dugouts — like  the  glitter  of  confetti, 
and  had  no  more  effect  than  that  before  the  infantry  made 
a  rush  for  the  enemy's  line  and  were  mown  down  by 
machine-gun  fire — the  Germans  were  very  strong  in 
machine-guns,  and  we  were  very  weak — in  the  usual  way 
of  those  early  days.  The  first  shell  fired  by  our  monster 
howitzer  was  heralded  by  a  low  reverberation,  as  of 
thunder,  from  the  field  below  us.  Then,  several  seconds 
later,  there  rose  from  the  Wytschaete  Ridge  a  tall,  black 
column  of  smoke  which  stood  steady  until  the  breeze 
clawed  at  it  and  tore  it  to  tatters. 

"Some  shell!"  said  an  officer.  "Now  we  ought  to  win 
the  war — I  don't  think!" 

Later  there  arrived  the  first  9.2  (nine-point-two) — 
"aunty,"  as  we  called  it. 

Well,  that  was  something  in  the  way  of  heavy  artillery, 
and  gradually  our  gun-power  grew  and  grew,  until  we 
could  "answer  back,"  and  give  more  than  came  to  us; 
but  meanwhile  the  New  Army  had  to  stand  the  racket, 
as  the  Old  Army  had  done,  being  strafed  by  harassing  fire, 
having  their  trenches  blown  in,  and  their  billets  smashed, 
and  their  bodies  broken,  at  all  times  and  in  all  places 
within  range  of  German  guns. 

Everywhere  the  enemy  was  on  high  ground  and  had 
observation  of  our  position.  From  the  Westhook  Ridge 
and  the  Pilkem  Ridge  his  observers  watched  every  move- 
ment of  our  men  round  Ypres,  and  along  the  main  road 


8o  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

to  Hooge,  signaling  back  to  their  guns  if  anybody  of" 
them  were  visible.  From  the  Wytschaete  Ridge  (White- 
sheet,  as  we  called  it)  and  Messines  they  could  see  for 
miles  across  our  territory,  not  only  the  trenches,  but  the 
ways  up  to  the  trenches,  and  the  villages  behind  them 
and  the  roads  through  the  villages.  They  looked  straight 
into  Kemmel  village  and  turned  their  guns  on  to  it  when 
our  men  crouched  among  its  ruins  and  opened  the  graves 
in  the  cemetery  and  lay  old  bones  bare.  Clear  and  vivid 
to  them  were  the  red  roofs  of  Dickebusch  village  and  the 
gaunt  ribs  of  its  broken  houses.  (I  knew  a  boy  from 
Fleet  Street  who  was  cobbler  there  in  a  room  between  the 
ruins.)  Those  Germans  gazed  down  the  roads  to  Vier- 
straat  and  Vormizeele,  and  watched  for  the  rising  of  white 
dust  which  would  tell  them  when  men  were  marching  by 
— more  cannon  fodder.  Southward  they  saw  Neuve 
Eglise,  with  its  rag  of  a  tower,  and  Plug  Street  wood.  In 
cheerful  mood,  on  sunny  days,  German  gunners  with  shells 
to  spare  ranged  upon  separate  farm-houses  and  isolated 
barns  until  they  became  bits  of  oddly  standing  brick 
about  great  holes.  They  shelled  the  roads  down  which 
our  transport  wagons  went  at  night,  and  the  communi- 
cation trenches  to  which  our  men  moved  up  to  the  front 
lines,  and  gun  -  positions  revealed  by  every  flash,  and 
dugouts  foolishly  frail  against  their  5.9's,  which  in  those 
early  days  we  could  only  answer  by  a  few  pip-squeaks. 
They  made  fixed  targets  of  crossroads  and  points  our 
men  were  bound  to  pass,  so  that  to  our  men  those  places 
became  sinister  with  remembered  horror  and  present 
fear:  Dead  Horse  Corner  and  Dead  Cow  Farm,  and  the 
farm  beyond  Plug  Street;  Dead  Dog  Farm  and  the 
Moated  Grange  on  the  way  to  St.-Eloi;  Stinking  Farm 
and  Suicide  Corner  and  Shell-trap  Barn,  out  by  Ypres. 

All  the  fighting  youth  of  our  race  took  their  turn  in 
those  places,  searched  along  those  roads,  lived  in  ditches 
and  dugouts  there,  under  constant  fire.  In  wet  holes 
along  the  Yser  Canal  by  Ypres,  young  officers  who  had 
known  the  decencies  of  home  life  tried   to  camouflage 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  8i 

their  beastliness  by  giving  a  touch  of  decoration  to  the 
clammy  walls.  They  bought  Kirchner  prints  of  little 
ladies  too  lightly  clad  for  the  cHmate  of  Flanders,  and 
pinned  them  up  as  a  reminder  of  the  dainty  feminine  side 
of  life  which  here  w^as  banished.  They  brought  broken 
chairs  and  mirrors  from  the  ruins  of  Ypres,  and  said, 
*'It's  quite  cozy,  after  all!" 

And  they  sat  there  chatting,  as  in  St.  James's  Street 
clubs,  in  the  same  tone  of  voice,  with  the  same  courtesy 
and  sense  of  humor — while  they  listened  to  noises  with- 
out, and  wondered  whether  it  would  be  to-day  or  to- 
morrow, or  in  the  middle  of  the  sentence  they  were  speak- 
ing, that  bits  of  steel  would  smash  through  that  mud 
above  their  heads  and  tear  them  to  bits  and  make  a  mess 
of  things. 

There  was  an  officer  of  the  Coldstream  Guards  who  sat 
in  one  of  these  holes,  like  many  others.  A  nice,  gentle 
fellow,  fond  of  music,  a  fine  judge  of  wine,  a  connoisseur 
of  old  furniture  and  good  food.  It  was  cruelty  to  put 
such  a  man  into  a  hole  in  the  earth,  like  the  ape-houses 
of  Hagenbeck's  Zoo.  He  had  been  used  to  comfort,  the 
little  luxuries  of  court  life.  There,  on  the  canal-bank,  he 
refused  to  sink  into  the  squalor.  He  put  on  pajamas  at 
night  before  sleeping  in  his  bunk — silk  pajamas — and 
while  waiting  for  his  breakfast  smoked  his  own  brand  of 
gold-tipped  cigarettes,  until  one  morning  a  big  shell  blew 
out  the  back  of  his  dugout  and  hurled  him  under  a  heap 
of  earth  and  timber.  Fie  crawled  out,  cursing  loudly 
with  a  nice  choice  of  language,  and  then  lit  another  gold- 
tipped  cigarette,  and  called  to  his  servant  for  breakfast. 
His  batman  was  a  fine  lad,  brought  up  in  the  old  tradi- 
tions of  service  to  an  officer  of  the  Guards,  and  he  provided 
excellent  little  meals,  done  to  a  turn,  until  something  else 
happened,  and  he  was  buried  alive  within  a  few  yards  of 
his  master.  .  .  .  Whenever  I  v/ent  to  the  canal-bank,  and 
I  went  there  many  times  (when  still  and  always  hungry 
high  velocities  came  searching  for  a  chance  meal),  I 
thought  of  my  friend  in  the  Guards,  and  of  other  men  I 


82  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

knew  who  had  lived  there  in  the  worst  days,  and  some 
of  whom  had  died  there.  They  hated  that  canal-bank 
and  dreaded  it,  but  they  jested  in  their  dugouts,  and 
there  was  the  laughter  of  men  who  hid  the  fear  in  their 
hearts  and  were  "game"  until  some  bit  of  steel  plugged 
them  with  a  gaping  wound  or  tore  their  flesh  to  tatters. 


VI 

Because  the  enemy  was  on  the  high  ground  and  our 
men  were  in  the  low  ground,  many  of  our  trenches  were 
wet  and  waterlogged,  even  in  summer,  after  heavy  rain. 
In  winter  they  were  in  bogs  and  swamps,  up  by  St.-Eloi, 
and  southward  this  side  of  Gomm.ecourt,  and  in  many 
other  evil  places.  The  enemy  drained  his  water  into  our 
ditches  when  he  could,  with  the  cunning  and  the  science 
of  his  way  of  war,  and  that  made  our  men  savage. 

I  remember  going  to  the  hne  this  side  of  Fricourt  on 
an  August  day  in  '15.  It  was  the  seventeenth  of  August, 
as  I  have  it  in  my  diary,  and  the  episode  is  vivid  in  my 
mind  because  I  saw  then  the  New  Army  lads  learning 
one  of  the  lessons  of  war  in  one  of  the  foulest  places.  I 
also  learned  the  sense  of  humor  of  a  British  general,  and 
afterward,  not  enjoying  the  joke,  the  fatalistic  valor  of 
officers  and  men  (in  civil  life  a  year  before)  who  lived  with 
the  knowledge  that  the  ground  beneath  them  was  mined 
and  charged  with  high  explosives,  and  might  hurl  them  to 
eternity  between  the  whiffs  of  a  cigarette. 

We  were  sitting  in  the  garden  of  the  general's  head- 
quarters, having  a  picnic  meal  before  going  into  the 
trenches.  In  spite  of  the  wasps,  which  attacked  the  sand- 
wiches, it  was  a  nice,  quiet  place  in  time  of  war.  No  shell 
came  crashing  in  our  neighborhood  (though  we  were  well 
within  range  of  the  enemy's  guns),  and  the  loudest  noise 
was  the  drop  of  an  over-ripe  apple  in  the  orchard.  Later 
on  a  shrill  whistle  signaled  a  hostile  airplane  overhead, 
but  it  passed  without  throwing  a  bomb. 

"  You  will  have  a  moist  time  in  some  of  the  trenches," 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  83 

said  the  general  (whose  boots  were  finely  polished). 
"The  rain  has  made  them  rather  damp.  .  .  .  But  you 
must  get  down  as  far  as  the  mine  craters.  We're  ex- 
pecting the  Germans  to  fire  one  at  any  moment,  and 
some  of  our  trenches  are  only  six  yards  away  from  the 
enemy.     It's  an  interesting  place." 

The  Interest  of  it  seemed  to  me  too  much  of  a  good 
thing,  and  I  uttered  a  pious  prayer  that  the  enemy 
would  not  explode  his  beastly  mine  under  me.  It  makes 
such  a  mess  of  a  man. 

A  staff  captain  came  out  with  a  report,  which  he  read: 
"The  sound  of  picks  has  been  heard  close  to  our  sap-head. 
The  enemy  will  probably  explode  their  mine  in  a  few 
hours." 

"That's  the  place  I  was  telling  you  about,"  said  the 
general.  "It's  well  worth  a  visit.  .  .  .  But  you  must  make 
up  your  mind  to  get  your  feet  wet." 

As  long  as  I  could  keep  my  head  dry  and  firmly  fixed 
to  my  shoulders,  I  was  ready  to  brave  the  perils  of  wet 
feet  with  any  man. 

It  had  been  raining  heavily  for  a  day  or  two.  I  re- 
member thinking  that  in  London — which  seemed  a  long 
way  off — people  were  going  about  under  umbrellas  and 
looking  glum  when  their  clothes  were  splashed  by  passing 
omnibuses.  The  women  had  their  skirts  tucked  up  and 
showed  their  pretty  ankles.  (Those  things  used  to  hap- 
pen in  the  far-off  days  of  peace.)  But  in  the  trenches, 
'r^ose  that  lay  low,  rain  meant  something  different,  and 

iviously  uncomfortable  for  men  who  lived  in  holes.  Our 
soldiers,  who  cursed  the  rain— as  in  the  old  days,  "they 
swore  terribly  in  Flanders" — did  not  tuck  their  clothes 
up  above  their  ankles.     They  took  off  their  trousers. 

There  was  something  ludicrous,  yet  pitiable,  in  the 
sight  of  those  hefty  men  coming  back  through  the  com- 
munication trenches  with  the  tails  of  their  shirts  flapping 
above  their  bare  legs,  which  were  plastered  with  a  yellow- 
ish mud.  Shouldering  their  rifles  or  their  spades,  they 
trudged  on  grimly  through  two  feet  of  water,  and  the 


84  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

boots  which  they  wore  without  socks  squelched  at  every 
step  with  a  loud,  sucking  noise — ''hke  a  German  drinking 
soup,"  said  an  officer  who  preceded  me. 

"Why  grouse?"  he  said,  presently.  "It's  better  than 
Brighton!" 

It  was  a  queer  experience,  this  paddling  through  the 
long  communication  trenches,  which  wound  in  and  out 
like  the  Hampton  Court  maze  toward  the  front  line,  and 
the  mine  craters  which  made  a  salient  to  our  right,  by  a 
place  called  the  "Tambour."  Shells  came  whining  over- 
head and  somewhere  behind  us  iron  doors  were  slamming 
in  the  sky,  with  metallic  bangs,  as  though  opening  and 
shutting  in  a  tempest.  The  sharp  crack  of  rifle-shots 
showed  that  the  snipers  were  busy  on  both  sides,  and 
once  I  stood  in  a  deep  pool,  with  the  water  up  to  my 
knees,  listening  to  what  sounded  like  the  tap-tap-tap  of 
invisible  blacksmiths  playing  a  tattoo  on  an  anvil. 

It  was  one  of  our  machine-guns  at  work  a  few  yards 
away  from  my  head,  which  I  ducked  below  the  trench 
parapet.  Splodge!  went  the  officer  in  front  of  me,  with 
a  yell  of  dismay.  The  water  was  well  above  his  top- 
boots.  Splosh!  went  another  man  ahead,  recovering  from 
a  side-slip  in  the  oozy  mud  and  clinging  desperately  to 
some  bunches  of  yarrow  growing  up  the  side  of  the  trench. 
Squelch!  went  a  young  gentleman  whose  puttees  and 
breeches  had  lost  their  glory  and  Vv^ere  but  swabs  about 
his  elegant  legs. 

"Clever  fellows!"  said  the  officer,  as  two  of  us  climb e" 
on  to  the  fire-stand  of  the  trench  in  order  to  avo  C; 
specially  deep  water-hole,  and  with  ducked  heads  and 
bodies  bent  double  (the  Germans  were  only  two  hundred 
yards  on  the  other  side  of  the  parapet)  walked  on  dry 
earth  for  at  least  ten  paces.  The  officer's  laughter  was 
loud  at  the  corner  of  the  next  traverse,  when  there  was 
an  abrupt  descent  into  a  slough  of  despond. 

"And  I  hope  they  can  swim!"  said  an  ironical  voice 
from  a  dugout,  as  the  officers  passed.  They  were  lying 
in  wet  rnud  in  those  square  burrows,  the  men  who  had 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  85 

been  working  all  night  under  their  platoon  commanders, 
and  were  now  sleeping  and  resting  in  their  trench  dwell- 
ings. As  I  paddled  on  I  glanced  at  those  men  lying  on 
straw  which  gave  out  a  moist  smell,  mixed  with  the  pun- 
gent vapors  of  chloride  of  lime.  They  were  not  interested 
in  the  German  guns,  which  were  giving  their  daily  dose 
of  *'hate"  to  the  village  of  Becourt-Becordel.  The  noise 
did  not  interrupt  their  heavy,  slumbrous  breathing. 
Some  of  those  who  were  awake  were  reading  novelettes, 
forgetting  war  in  the  eternal  plot  of  cheap  romance. 
Others  sat  at  the  entrance  of  their  burrows  with  their 
knees  tucked  up,  staring  gloomily  to  the  opposite  wall  of 
the  trench  in  day-dreams  of  some  places  betwixt  Aber- 
deen and  Hackney  Downs.  I  spoke  to  one  of  them,  and 
said,  "How  are  you  getting  on.r"'  He  answered,  "I'm 
not  getting  on.  ...  I  don't  see  the  fun  of  this." 

"Can  you  keep  dry?" 

"Dry?  .  .  .  I'm  soaked  to  the  skin." 

"What's  it  like  here?" 

"It's  hell.  .  .  .  The  devils  blow  up  mines  to  make  things 
worse." 

Another  boy  spoke. 

"Don't  you  mind  what  he  says,  sir.  He's  always  a 
gloomy  bastard.     Doesn't  believe  in  his  luck." 

There  were  mascots  for  luck,  at  the  doorways  of  their 
dugouts— a  woman's  face  carved  in  chalk,  the  name  of 
a  girl  written  in  pebbles,  a  portrait  of  the  King  in  a  frame 
of  withered  wild  flowers. 

A  company  of  our  New  Army  boys  had  respected  a 
memento  of  French  troops  who  were  once  in  this  section 
of  trenches.  It  was  an  altar  built  into  the  side  of  the 
trench,  where  mass  was  said  each  morning  by  a  soldier- 
priest.  It  was  decorated  with  vases  and  candlesticks, 
and  above  the  altar-table  was  a  statue,  crudely  modeled, 
upon  the  base  of  which  I  read  the  words  Notre  Dame  des 
Tranchees  ("Our  Lady  of  the  Trenches").  A  tablet  fast- 
ened in  the  earth-wall  recorded  in  French  the  desire  of 
those  who  worshiped  here; 


86  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"This  altar,  dedicated  to  Our  Lady  of  the  Trenches, 
was  blessed  by  the  chaplain  of  the  French  regiment.  The 
9th  Squadron  of  the  6th  Company  recommends  its  care 
and  preservation  to  their  successors.  Please  do  not  touch 
the  fragile  statue  in  trench-clay." 

"Our  Lady  of  the  Trenches!"  It  was  the  first  time  I 
had  heard  of  this  new  title  of  the  Madonna,  whose  spirit, 
if  she  visited  those  ditches  of  death,  must  have  wept  with 
pity  for  all  those  poor  children  of  mankind  whose  faith 
was  so  unlike  the  work  they  had  to  do. 

From  a  dugout  near  the  altar  there  came  tinkling 
music.  A  young  soldier  was  playing  the  mandolin  to 
two  comrades.  "All  the  latest  ragtime,"  said  one  of 
them  with  a  grin. 

So  we  paddled  on  our  way,  glimpsing  every  now  and 
then  over  the  parapets  at  the  German  lines  a  few  hundred 
yards  away,  and  at  a  village  in  which  the  enemy  was  in- 
trenched, quiet  and  sinister  there.  The  water  through 
which  we  waded  was  alive  with  a  multitude  of  swimmins: 
frogs.  Red  slugs  crawled  up  the  sides  of  the  trenches, 
and  queer  beetles  with  dangerous-looking  horns  wriggled 
along  dry  ledges  and  invaded  the  dugouts  in  search  of 
the  vermin  which  infested  them. 

"Rats  are  the  worst  plague,"  said  a  colonel,  coming 
out  of  the  battalion  headquarters,  where  he  had  a  hole 
large  enough  for  a  bed  and  table.  "There  are  thousands 
of  rats  in  this  part  of  the  line,  and  they're  audacious 
devils.  In  the  dugout  next  door  the  straw  at  night 
writhes  with  them.  ...  I  don't  mind  the  mice  so  much. 
One  of  them  comes  to  dinner  on  my  table  every  evening, 
a  friendly  little  beggar  who  is  very  pally  with  me." 

We  looked  out  above  the  mine-craters,  a  chaos  of 
tumbled  earth,  where  our  trenches  ran  so  close  to  the 
enemy's  that  it  was  forbidden  to  smoke  or  talk,  and  where 
our  sappers  listened  with  all  their  souls  in  their  ears  to 
any  little  tapping  or  picking  which  might  signal  approach- 
ing upheaval.  The  coats  of  some  French  soldiers,  blown 
up  long  ago  by  some  of  these  mines,  looked  like  the  blue 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  87 

of  the  chicory  flower  growing  in  the  churned-up  soil.  .  .  . 
The  new  mine  was  not  fired  that  afternoon,  up  to  the 
time  of  my  going  away.  But  it  was  fired  next  day,  and 
I  wondered  whether  the  gloomy  boy  had  gone  up  with  it. 
There  was  a  foreknowledge  of  death  in  his  eyes. 

One  of  the  officers  had  spoken  to  me  privately. 

"I'm  afraid  of  losing  my  nerve  before  the  men.  It 
haunts  me,  that  thought.  The  shelling  is  bad  enough, 
but  it's  the  mining  business  that  wears  one's  nerve  to 
shreds.     One  never  knows." 

I  hated  to  leave  him  there  to  his  agony.  .  .  .  The  colonel 
himself  was  all  nerves,  and  he  loathed  the  rats  as  much 
as  the  shell-fire  and  the  mining,  those  big,  lean,  hungry 
rats  of  the  trenches,  who  invaded  the  dugouts  and  frisked 
over  the  bodies  of  sleeping  men.  One  young  subaltern 
was  in  terror  of  them.  He  told  me  how  he  shot  at  one, 
seeing  the  glint  of  its  eyes  in  the  darkness.  The  bullet 
from  his  revolver  ricocheted  from  wall  to  wall,  and  he 
was  nearly  court-martialed  for  having  fired. 

The  rats,  the  lice  that  lived  on  the  bodies  of  our  men, 
the  water-logged  trenches,  the  shell-fire  which  broke  down 
the  parapets  and  buried  men  in  wet  mud,  wetter  for  their 
blood,  the  German  snipers  waiting  for  English  heads,  and 
then  the  mines — oh,  a  cheery  little  school  of  courage  for 
the  sons  of  gentlemen!  A  gentle  academy  of  war  for  the 
devil  and  General  Squeers! 

VII 

The  city  of  Ypres  was  the  capital  of  our  battlefields  in 
Flanders  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  war,  and 
the  ground  on  which  it  stands,  whether  a  new  city  rises 
there  or  its  remnants  of  ruin  stay  as  a  memorial  of  dread- 
ful things,  will  be  forever  haunted  by  the  spirit  of  those 
men  of  ours  who  passed  through  its  gates  to  fight  in  the 
fields  beyond  or  to  fall  within  its  ramparts. 

I  went  through  Ypres  so  many  times  in  early  days  and 
late  days  of  the  war  that  I  think  I  could  find  my  way 


88  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

about  it  blindfold,  even  now.  I  saw  it  first  in  March  o( 
191 5,  before  the  battle  when  the  Germans  first  used  poi- 
son-gas and  bombarded  its  choking  people,  and  French 
and  British  soldiers,  until  the  city  fell  into  a  chaos  of 
masonry.  On  that  first  visit  I  found  it  scarred  by  shell- 
fire,  and  its  great  Cloth  Hall  was  roofless  and  licked  out 
by  the  flame  of  burning  timbers,  but  most  of  the  buildings 
were  still  standing  and  the  shops  were  busy  with  custom- 
ers in  khaki,  and  in  the  Grande  Place  were  many  small 
booths  served  by  the  women  and  girls  who  sold  picture 
post-cards  and  Flemish  lace  and  fancy  cakes  and  soap  to 
British  soldiers  sauntering  about  without  a  thought  of 
what  might  happen  here  in  this  city,  so  close  to  the 
enemy's  lines,  so  close  to  his  guns.  I  had  tea  in  a  bun- 
shop,  crowded  with  young  officers,  who  were  served  by 
two  Flemish  girls,  buxom,  smiling,  glad  of  all  the  EngUsh 
money  they  were  making. 

A  few  weeks  later  the  devil  came  to  Ypres.  The  first 
sign  of  his  work  was  when  a  mass  of  French  soldiers  and 
colored  troops,  and  English,  Irish,  Scottish,  and  Cana- 
dian soldiers  came  staggering  through  the  Lille  and 
Menin  gates  with  panic  in  their  look,  and  some  foul  spell 
upon  them.  They  were  gasping  for  breath,  vomiting, 
falling  into  unconsciousness,  and,  as  they  lay,  their  lungs 
were  struggling  desperately  against  some  stifling  thing. 
A  whitish  cloud  crept  up  to  the  gates  of  Ypres,  with  a 
sweet  smell  of  violets,  and  women  and  girls  smelled  it  and 
then  gasped  and  lurched  as  they  ran  and  fell.  It  was 
after  that  when  shells  came  in  hurricane  flights  over 
Ypres,  smashing  the  houses  and  setting  them  on  fire, 
until  they  toppled  and  fell  inside  themselves.  Hundreds 
of  civilians  hid  in  their  cellars,  and  many  were  buried 
there.  Others  crawled  into  a  big  drain-pipe — there  were 
wounded  women  and  children  among  them,  and  a  young 
French  interpreter,  the  Baron  de  Rosen,  who  tried  to 
help  them — and  they  stayed  there  three  days  and  nights, 
in  their  vomit  and  excrement  and  blood,  until  the  bom- 
bardment ceased.     Ypres  was  a  city  of  ruin,  with  a  red 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  8q 

fire  In  Its  heart  where  the  Cloth  Hall  and  cathedral 
smoldered  below  their  broken  arches  and  high  ribs  of 
masonry  that  had  been  their  buttresses  and  towers. 

When  I  went  there  two  months  later  I  saw  Ypres  as  it 
stood  through  the  years  of  the  war  that  followed,  chang- 
ing only  in  the  disintegration  of  its  ruin  as  broken  walls 
became  more  broken  and  fallen  houses  were  raked  into 
smaller  fragments  by  new  bombardments,  for  there  was 
never  a  day  for  years  in  which  Ypres  was  not  shelled. 

The  approach  to  it  was  sinister  after  one  had  left  Poper- 
inghe  and  passed  through  the  skeleton  of  Vlamertinghe 
church,  beyond  Goldfish  Chateau.  .  .  .  For  a  long  time 
Poperinghe  was  the  last  link  with  a  life  in  which  men  and 
women  could  move  freely  without  hiding  from  the  pur- 
suit of  death;  and  even  there,  from  time  to  time,  there 
were  shells  from  long-range  guns  and,  later,  night-birds 
dropping  high-explosive  eggs.  Round  about  Poperinghe, 
by  Reninghelst  and  Locre,  long  convoys  of  motor-wagons, 
taking  up  a  new  day's  rations  from  the  rail-heads,  raised 
clouds  of  dust  which  powdered  the  hedges  white.  Flem- 
ish cart-horses  with  huge  fringes  of  knotted  string  wended 
their  way  between  motor-lorries  and  gun-limbers.  Often 
the  sky  was  blue  above  the  hop-gardens,  with  fleecy 
clouds  over  distant  woodlands  and  the  gray  old  towers 
of  Flemish  churches  and  the  Windmills  on  Mont  Rouge 
and  Mont  Noir,  whose  sails  have  turned  through  centuries 
of  peace  and  strife.  It  all  comes  back  to  me  as  I  write 
— that  way  to  Ypres,  and  the  sounds  and  the  smells  of 
the  roads  and  fields  where  the  traffic  of  war  went  up, 
month  after  month,  year  after  year. 

That  day  when  I  saw  it  first,  after  the  gas-attack,  was 
strangely  quiet,  I  remember.  There  was  "nothing  do- 
ing," as  our  men  used  to  say.  The  German  gunners 
seemed  asleep  in  the  noonday  sun,  and  it  was  a  charming 
day  for  a  stroll  and  a  talk  about  the  raving  madness  of 
war  under  every  old  hedge. 

"What  about  lunch  in  Dickebusch  on  the  way  up?" 
asked  one  of  my  companions.     There  were  three  of  us. 


90  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

It  seemed  a  good  idea,  and  we  walked  toward  the  vil- 
lage which  then — they  were  early  days! — looked  a  peace- 
ful spot,  with  a  shimmer  of  sunshine  above  its  gray 
thatch  and  red-tiled  roofs. 

Suddenly  one  of  us  said,  "Good  God!" 

An  iron  door  had  slammed  down  the  corridors  of  the 
sky  and  the  hamlet  into  which  we  were  just  going  was 
blotted  out  by  black  smoke,  which  came  up  from  its  cen- 
ter as  though  its  market-place  had  opened  up  and  vomited 
out  infernal  vapors. 

"A  big  shell  that!"  said  one  man,  a  tall,  lean-limbed 
officer,  who  later  in  the  war  was  sniper-in-chief  of  the 
British  army.  Something  enraged  him  at  the  sight  of 
that  shelled  village. 

"Damn  them!"  he  said.  "Damn  the  war!  Damn  all 
dirty  dogs  who  smash  up  life!" 

Four  times  the  thing  happened,  and  we  were  glad  there 
had  been  a  minute  or  so  between  us  and  Dickebusch. 
(In  Dickebusch  my  young  cobbler  friend  from  Fleet  Street 
was  crouching  low,  expecting  death.)  The  peace  of  the 
day  was  spoiled.  There  was  seldom  a  real  peace  on  the 
way  to  Ypres.  The  German  gunners  had  wakened  up 
again.  They  always  did.  They  were  getting  busy,  those 
house-wreckers.  The  long  rush  of  shells  tore  great  holes 
through  the  air.  Under  a  hedge,  with  our  feet  in  the 
ditch,  we  ate  the  luncheon  we  had  carried  in  our  pockets. 

"A  silly  idea!"  said  the  lanky  man,  with  a  fierce,  sad 
look  in  his  eyes.  He  was  Norman-Irish,  and  a  man  of 
letters,  and  a  crack  shot,  and  all  the  boys  he  knew  were 
being  killed. 

"What's  silly?"  I  asked,  wondering  what  particular 
foolishness  he  was  thinking  of,  in  a  world  of  folly. 

"Silly  to  die  with  a  broken  bit  of  sandwich  in  one's 
mouth,  just  because  some  German  fellow,  some  fat,  stupid 
man  a  few  miles  away,  looses  off  a  bit  of  steel  in  search  of 
the  bodies  of  men  with  whom  he  has  no  personal  ac- 
quaintance." 

"Damn  silly,"  I  said. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  91 

**That's  all  there  is  to  it  in  modern  warfare,"  said  the 
lanky  man.  ''It's  not  like  the  old  way  of  fighting,  body 
to  body.  Your  strength  against  your  enemy's,  your  cun- 
ning against  his.  Now  it  is  mechanics  and  chemistry. 
What  is  the  splendor  of  courage,  the  glory  of  youth,  when 
guns  kill  at  fifteen  miles?" 

Afterward  this  man  went  close  to  the  enemy,  devised 
tricks  to  make  him  show  his  head,  and  shot  each  head 
that  showed. 

The  guns  ceased  fire.  Their  tumult  died  down,  and  all 
was  quiet  again.  It  was  horribly  quiet  on  our  way  into 
Ypres,  across  the  railway,  past  the  red-brick  asylum, 
where  a  calvary  hung  unscathed  on  broken  walls,  past 
the  gas-tank  at  the  crossroads.  This  silence  was  not  re- 
assuring, as  our  heels  clicked  over  bits  of  broken  brick  on 
our  way  into  Ypres.  The  enemy  had  been  shelling  heavily 
for  three-quarters  of  an  hour  in  the  morning.  There  was 
no  reason  why  he  should  not  begin  again.  ...  I  remember 
now  the  intense  silence  of  the  Grande  Place  that  day  after 
the  gas-attack,  when  we  three  men  stood  there  looking 
up  at  the  charred  ruins  of  the  Cloth  Hall.  It  was  a  great 
solitude  of  ruin.  No  living  figure  stirred  among  the  piles 
of  masonry  which  were  tombstones  above  many  dead. 
We  three  were  like  travelers  who  had  come  to  some 
capital  of  an  old  and  buried  civilization,  staring  with  awe 
and  uncanny  fear  at  this  burial-place  of  ancient  splendor, 
with  broken  traces  of  peoples  who  once  had  lived  here  in 
security.  I  looked  up  at  the  blue  sky  above  those  white 
ruins,  and  had  an  idea  that  death  hovered  there  like  a 
hawk  ready  to  pounce.  Even  as  one  of  us  (not  I)  spoke 
the  thought,  the  signal  came.  It  was  a  humming  drone 
high  up  in  the  sky. 

"Look  out!"  said  the  lanky  man.     "Germans!" 

It  was  certain  that  two  birds  hovering  over  the  Grande 
Place  were  hostile  things,  because  suddenly  white  pufF- 
balls  burst  all  round  them,  as  the  shrapnel  of  our  own 
guns  scattered  about  them.  But  they  flew  round  steadily 
in  a  half-circle  until  they  were  poised  above  our  heads. 


92  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  lOLD 

It  was  tlir.c  to  seek  cover,  which  was  not  easy  to  find  just 
there,  v/here  masses  of  stonework  were  piled  high.  At 
any  moment  things  might  drop.  I  ducked  my  head 
behind  a  curtain  of  bricks  as  I  heard  a  shrill  ''coo-ee!" 
from  a  shell.  It  burst  close  with  a  scatter,  and  a  tin  cup 
was  flung  against  a  bit  of  wall  close  to  where  the  lanky 
man  sat  in  a  shell-hole.  He  picked  it  up  and  said, 
"Queer!"  and  then  smelled  it,  and  said  "Queer!"  again. 
It  was  not  an  ordmary  bomb.  It  had  held  some  poison- 
ous liquid  from  a  German  chemist's  shop.  Other  bombs 
were  dropping  round  as  the  two  hostile  airmen  circled 
overhead,  untouched  still  by  the  following  shell-bursts. 
Then  they  passed  toward  their  own  lines,  and  my  friend 
in  the  shell-hole  called  to  me  and  said,  "Let's  be  going." 

It  was  time  to  go. 

When  we  reached  the  edge  of  the  town  our  guns  away 
back  started  shelling,  and  we  knew  the  Germans  would 
answer.  So  we  sat  in  a  field  nearby  to  watch  the  bom- 
bardment. The  air  moved  with  the  rushing  waves  which 
tracked  the  carry  of  each  shell  from  our  batteries,  and  over 
Ypres  came  the  high  singsong  of  the  enemies'  answering 
voice. 

As  the  dusk  fell  there  was  a  movement  out  from  Vla- 
mertinghe,  a  movement  of  transport  wagons  and  march- 
ing men.  They  were  going  up  in  the  darkness  through 
Ypres— rations  and  reliefs.  They  were  the  New  Army 
men  of  the  West  Riding. 

"Carry  on  there,"  said  a  young  oflicer  at  the  head  of 
his  company.  Something  in  his  eyes  startled  me.  Was 
it  fear,  or  an  act  of  sacrifice  .f"  I  wondered  if  he  would  be 
killed  that  night.  Men  were  killed  most  nights  on  the 
way  through  Ypres,  sometimes  a  few  and  sometimes 
many.  One  shell  killed  thirty  one  night,  and  their  bodies 
lay  strewn,  headless  and  limbless,  at  the  corner  of  the 
Grande  Place.  Transport  wagons  galloped  their  way 
through,  between  bursts  of  shell-fire,  hoping  to  dodge 
them,  and  sometimes  not  dodging  them.  I  saw  the  litter 
of  their  wheels  and  shafts,  and  the  bodies  of  the  drivers. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  93 

and  the  raw  flesh  of  the  dead  horses  that  had  not  dodged 
them.  Many  men  were  buried  ahve  in  Ypres,  under 
masses  of  masonry  when  they  had  been  sleeping  in  cellars, 
and  were  wakened  by  the  avalanche  above  them.  Com- 
rades tried  to  dig  them  out,  to  pull  away  great  stones,  to 
get  down  to  those  vaults  below  from  which  voices  were 
calling;  and  while  they  worked  other  shells  came  and 
laid  dead  bodies  above  the  stones  which  had  entombed 
their  living  comrades.  That  happened,  not  once  or  twice, 
but  many  times  in  Ypres. 

There  was  a  Town  Major  of  Ypres.  Men  said  it  was 
a  sentence  of  death  to  any  officer  appointed  to  that  job. 
I  think  one  of  them  I  met  had  had  eleven  predecessors. 
He  sat  in  a  cellar  of  the  old  prison,  with  walls  of  sand- 
bags on  each  side  of  him,  but  he  could  not  sit  there  very 
long  at  a  stretch,  because  it  was  his  duty  to  regulate 
the  traffic  according  to  the  shell-fire.  He  kept  a  visitors' 
book  as  a  hobby,  until  it  was  buried  under  piles  of  prison, 
and  was  a  hearty,  cheerful  soul,  in  spite  of  the  menace 
of  death  alv/ays  about  him. 


VIII 

My  memory  goes  back  to  a  strange  night  in  Ypres  in 
those  early  days.  It  was  GuUett,  the  Australian  eye- 
witness, afterward  in  Palestine,  who  had  the  idea. 

"It  would  be  a  great  adventure,"  he  said,  as  we  stood 
listening  to  the  gun-fire  over  there. 

"It  would  be  damn  silly,"  said  a  staff-officer.  "Only 
a  stern  sense  of  duty  would  make  me  do  it." 

It  was  GuUett  who  was  the  brave  man. 

We  took  a  bottle  of  Cointreau  and  a  sweet  cake  as  a 
gift  to  any  battalion  mess  we  might  find  in  the  ramparts, 
and  were  sorry  for  ourselves  when  we  failed  to  find  it,  nor, 
for  a  long  time,  any  living  soul. 

Our  own  footsteps  were  the  noisiest  sounds  as  we  stum- 
bled over  the  broken  stones.  No  other  footstep  paced 
dov/n  any  of  those  streets  of  shattered  houses  through 


94  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

which  we  wandered  with  tightened  nerves.  There  was 
no  movement  among  all  those  rubbish  heaps  of  fallen 
masonry  and  twisted  iron.  We  were  in  the  loneliness  of 
a  sepulcher  which  had  been  once  a  fair  city. 

For  a  little  while  my  friend  and  I  stood  in  the  Grande 
Place,  not  speaking.  In  the  deepening  twilight,  beneath 
the  last  flame-feathers  of  the  sinking  sun  and  the  first 
stars  that  glimmered  in  a  pale  sky,  the  frightful  beauty 
of  the  ruins  put  a  spell  upon  us. 

The  tower  of  the  cathedral  rose  high  above  the  frame- 
work of  broken  arches  and  single  pillars,  like  a  white  rock 
which  had  been  split  from  end  to  end  by  a  thunderbolt. 
A  recent  shell  had  torn  out  a  slice  so  that  the  top  of  the 
tower  was  supported  only  upon  broken  buttresses,  and 
the  great  pile  was  hollowed  out  like  a  decayed  tooth. 
The  Cloth  Hall  was  but  a  skeleton  in  stone,  with  immense 
gaunt  ribs  about  the  dead  carcass  of  its  former  majesty. 
Beyond,  the  tower  of  St.  Mark's  was  a  stark  ruin,  which 
gleamed  white  through  the  darkening  twilight. 

We  felt  as  men  who  should  stand  gazing  upon  the  ruins 
of  Westminster  Abbey,  while  the  shadows  of  night  crept 
into  their  dark  caverns  and  into  their  yawning  chasms  of 
chaotic  masonry,  with  a  gleam  of  moon  upon  their  riven 
towers  and  fingers  of  pale  hght  touching  the  ribs  of 
isolated  arches.  In  the  spaciousness  of  the  Grande  Place 
at  Ypres  my  friend  and  I  stood  like  the  last  men  on  earth 
in  a  city  of  buried  hfe. 

It  was  almost  dark  now  as  we  made  our  way  through 
other  streets  of  rubbish  heaps.  Strangely  enough,  as  I 
remember,  many  of  the  iron  lamp-posts  had  been  left 
standing,  though  bent  and  twisted  in  a  drunken  way, 
and  here  and  there  we  caught  the  sweet  whiff  of  flowers 
and  plants  still  growing  in  gardens  which  had  not  been 
utterly  destroyed  by  the  daily  tempest  of  shells,  though 
the  houses  about  them  had  been  all  wrecked. 

The  woods  below  the  ramparts  were  slashed  and  torn 
by  these  storms,  and  in  the  darkness,  lightened  faintly  by 
the  crescent  moon,  we  stumbled  over  broken  branches 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  95 

and  innumerable  shell-holes.  The  silence  was  broken  now 
by  the  roar  of  a  gun,  which  sounded  so  loud  that  I  jumped 
sideways  with  the  sudden  shock  of  it.  It  seemed  to  be 
the  signal  for  our  batteries,  and  shell  after  shell  went  rush- 
ing through  the  night,  with  that  long,  menacing  hiss 
which  ends  in  a  dull  blast. 

The  reports  of  the  guns  and  the  explosions  of  the  shells 
followed  each  other,  and  mingled  in  an  enormous  tumult, 
echoed  back  by  the  ruins  of  Ypres  in  hollow,  reverberating 
thunder-strokes.  The  enemy  was  answering  back,  not 
very  fiercely  yet,  and  from  the  center  of  the  town,  in  or 
about  the  Grande  Place,  came  the  noise  Df  falling  houses 
or  of  huge  blocks  of  stone  splitting  into  fragments. 

We  groped  along,  scared  with  the  sense  of  death  around 
us.  The  first  flares  of  the  night  were  being  lighted  by 
both  sides  above  their  trenches  on  each  side  of  the  salient. 
The  balls  of  light  rose  into  the  velvety  darkness  and  a 
moment  later  suff^used  the  sky  with  a  white  glare  which 
faded  away  tremulously  after  half  a  minute. 

Against  the  first  vivid  brightness  of  it  the  lines  of  trees 
along  the  roads  to  Hooge  were  silhouetted  as  black  as 
ink,  and  the  fields  between  Ypres  and  the  trenches  were 
flooded  with  a  milky  luminance.  The  whole  shape  of  the 
salient  was  revealed  to  us  in  those  flashes.  We  could  see 
all  those  places  for  which  our  soldiers  fought  and  died. 
We  stared  across  the  fields  beyond  the  Menin  road 
toward  the  Hooge  crater,  and  those  trenches  which  were 
battered  to  pieces  but  not  abandoned  in  the  first  battle 
of  Ypres  and  the  second  battle. 

That  salient  was,  even  then,  in  191 5,  a  graveyard  of 
British  soldiers — there  were  years  to  follow  when  many 
more  would  lie  there — and  as  between  flash  and  flash  the 
scene  was  revealed,  I  seemed  to  see  a  great  army  of  ghosts, 
the  spirits  of  all  those  boys  who  had  died  on  this  ground. 
It  was  the  darkness,  and  the  tumult  of  guns,  and  our 
lonehness  here  on  the  ramparts,  which  put  an  edge  to 
my  nerves  and  made  me  see  unnatural  things. 

No  wonder  a  sentry  was  startled  when  he  saw  our  two 


96  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

figures  approaching  him  through  a  clump  of  trees.  His 
words  rang  out  like  pistol-shots. 

"Halt!     Who  goes  there?" 

"Friends!"  we  shouted,  seeing  the  gleam  of  light  on  a 
shaking  bayonet. 

"Come  close  to  be  recognized!"  he  said,  and  his  voice 
was  harsh. 

We  went  close,  and  I  for  one  was  afraid.  Young  sen- 
tries sometimes  shot  too  soon. 

"Who  are  you.^*"  he  asked,  in  a  more  natural  voice,  and 
when  we  explained  he  laughed  gruffly.  "I  never  saw 
two  strangers  pass  this  way  before!" 

lie  was  an  old  soldier,  "back  to  the  army  again,"  with 
Kitchener's  men.  He  had  been  in  the  Chitral  campaign 
and  South  Africa — "Little  wars  compared  to  this,"  as  he 
said.  A  fine,  simple  man,  and  although  a  bricklayer's 
laborer  in  private  life,  with  a  knowledge  of  the  right  word. 
I  was  struck  when  he  said  that  the  German  flares  were 
more  "luminous"  than  ours.  I  could  hardly  see  his  face 
in  the  darkness,  except  when  he  struck  a  match  once,  but 
his  figure  was  black  against  the  illumined  sky,  and  I 
watched  the  motion  of  his  arm  as  he  pointed  to  the  roads 
up  which  his  comrades  had  gone  to  the  support  of  another 
battalion  at  Hooge,  who  were  hard  pressed.  "They  went 
along  under  a  lot  of  shrapnel  and  had  many  casualties." 

He  told  the  story  of  that  night  in  a  quiet,  thoughtful 
way,  with  phrases  of  almost  biblical  beauty  in  their  simple 
truth,  and  the  soul  of  the  man,  the  spirit  of  the  whole 
army  in  which  he  was  a  private  soldier,  was  revealed  when 
he  flashed  out  a  sentence  with  his  one  note  of  fire,  "But 
the  enemy  lost  more  than  we  did,  sir,  that  night!" 

We  wandered  away  again  into  the  darkness,  with  the 
din  of  the  bombardment  all  about  us.  There  was  not  a 
square  yard  of  ground  unplowed  by  shells  and  we  did 
not  nourish  any  false  illusions  as  to  finding  a  safe  spot 
for  a  bivouac. 

There  was  no  spot  within  the  ramparts  of  Ypres  where 
a  man  might  say  "No  shells  will  fall  here."     But  one 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  97 

place  we  found  where  there  seemed  some  reasonable  odds 
of  safety.  There  also,  if  sleep  assailed  us,  we  might  curl 
up  in  an  abandoned  dugout  and  hope  that  it  would  not 
be  "crumped"  before  the  dawn.  There  were  several  of 
these  shelters  there,  but,  peering  into  them  by  the  light 
of  a  match,  I  shuddered  at  the  idea  of  lying  in  one  of  them. 
They  had  been  long  out  of  use  and  there  was  a  foul  look 
about  the  damp  bedding  and  rugs  which  had  been  left  to 
rot  there.  They  were  inhabited  already  by  half-wild  cats 
— ^the  abandoned  cats  of  Ypres,  which  hunted  mice 
through  the  ruins  of  their  old  houses — and  they  spat  at 
me  and  glared  with  green-eyed  fear  as  I  thrust  a  match 
into  their  lairs. 

There  were  two  kitchen  chairs,  with  a  deal  table  on 
which  we  put  our  cake  and  Cointreau,  and  here,  through 
half  a  night,  my  friend  and  I  sat  watching  and  listening 
to  that  weird  scene  upon  which  the  old  moon  looked 
down;  and,  as  two  men  will  at  such  a  time,  we  talked 
over  all  the  problems  of  life  and  death  and  the  meaning 
of  man's  heritage. 

Another  sentry  challenged  us — all  his  nerves  jangled  at 
our  apparition.  He  was  a  young  fellow,  one  of  "  Kitchen- 
er's crowd,"  and  told  us  frankly  that  he  had  the  "jim- 
jams"  in  this  solitude  of  Ypres  and  "saw  Germans" 
every  time  a  rat  jumped.  He  lingered  near  us — "for 
company." 

It  was  becoming  chilly.  The  dew  made  our  clothes 
damp.  Cake  and  sweet  liquor  were  poor  provisions  for 
the  night,  and  the  thought  of  hot  tea  was  Infinitely  seduc- 
tive. Perhaps  somewhere  one  might  find  a  few  soldiers 
round  a  kettle  in  some  friendly  dugout.  We  groped  our 
way  along,  holding  our  breath  at  times  as  a  shell  came 
sweeping  overhead  or  burst  with  a  sputter  of  steel  against 
the  ramparts.  It  was  profoundly  dark,  so  that  only  the 
glowworms  glittered  like  jewels  on  black  velvet.  The 
moon  had  gone  down,  and  inside  Ypres  the  light  of  the 
distant  flares  only  glimmered  faintly  above  the  broken 
walls.     In  a  tunnel  of  darkness  voices  were  speaking  and 


QP.  NOW  IT  CAN  liE  TOLD 

some  one  was  whistling  softly,  and  a  gleam  of  red  light 
made  a  bar  across  the  grass.  We  walked  toward  a  group 
of  black  figures,  suddenly  silent  at  our  approach — obvi- 
ously startled. 

"Who's  there,'"'  said  a  voice. 

We  were  just  in  time  for  tea — a  stroke  of  luck — with  a 
company  of  boys  (all  Kitchener  lads  from  the  Civil  Ser- 
vice) who  were  spending  the  night  here.  They  had  made 
a  fire  behind  a  screen  to  give  them  a  little  comfort  and 
frighten  off  the  ghosts,  and  gossiped  with  a  queer  sense 
of  humor,  cynical  and  blasphemous,  but  even  through 
their  jokes  there  was  a  yearning  for  the  end  of  a  business 
which  was  too  close  to  death. 

I  remember  the  gist  of  their  conversation,  which  was 
partly  devised  for  my  benefit.  One  boy  declared  that  he 
was  sick  of  the  whole  business. 

**I  should  like  to  cancel  my  contract,"  he  remarked. 

"Yes,  send  in  your  resignation,  old  lad,"  said  another, 
with  ironical  laughter. 

"They'd  consider  it,  wouldn't  they?  P'raps  offer  a 
rise  in  wages — I  don't  think!" 

Another  boy  said,  "I  am  a  citizen  of  no  mean  Empire, 
but  what  the  hell  is  the  Empire  going  to  do  for  me  when 
the  next  shell  blows  off  both  my  bleeding  legs?" 

'J  his  remark  was  also  received  by  a  gust  of  subdued 
laughter,  silenced  for  a  moment  by  a  roar  and  upheaval 
of  masonry  somewhere  by  the  ruins  of  the  Cloth  Hall. 

"Soldiers  are  prisoners,"  said  a  boy  without  any  trace 
of  humor.  "You're  lagged,  and  you  can't  escape.  A 
*blighty'  is  the  best  luck  you  can  hope  for." 

"1  don't  want  to  kill  Germans,"  said  a  fellow  with  a 
superior  accent.  "I've  no  personal  quarrel  against  them, 
and,  anyhow,  I  don't  like  butcher's  work." 

"Christian  service,  that's  what  the  padre  calls  it.  I 
wonder  if  Christ  would  have  stuck  a  bayonet  into  a  Ger- 
man stomach — a  German  with  his  hands  up.  That's 
what  we're  asked  to  do." 

"Oh,  Christianity  is  out  of  business,  my  child.     Why 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  99' 

mention  it?  This  is  war,  and  we're  back  to  the  primitive 
state — B.C.  All  the  same,  I  say  my  little  prayers  when 
I'm  in  a  blue  funk. 

"Gentle  Jesus,  meek  and  mild, 
Look  upon  a  little  child." 

This  last  remark  was  the  prize  joke  of  the  evening,  re- 
ceived with  much  hilarity,  not  too  loud,  for  fear  of  draw- 
ing fire — though  really  no  Germans  could  have  heard  any 
laughter  in  Ypres. 

Nearby,  their  officer  was  spending  the  night.  We 
called  on  him,  and  found  him  sitting  alone  in  a  dugout 
furnished  by  odd  bits  from  the  wrecked  houses,  with  waxen 
flowers  in  a  glass  case  on  the  shelf,  and  an  old  cottage 
clock  which  ticked  out  the  night,  and  a  velvet  armchair 
which  had  been  the  pride  of  a  Flemish  home.  He  was  a 
Devonshire  lad,  with  a  pale,  thoughtful  face,  and  I  was 
sorry  for  him  in  his  loneliness,  with  a  roof  over  his  head 
which  would  be  no  proof  against  a  fair-si/.cd  shell. 

He  expressed  no  surprise  at  seeing  us.  I  think  he  would 
not  have  been  surprised  if  the  ghost  of  Edward  the  Black 
Prince  had  called  on  him.  He  would  have  greeted  him 
with  the  same  politeness  and  oflfered  him  his  green  arm- 
chair. 

The  night  passed.  The  guns  slackened  down  before 
the  dawn.  For  a  little  while  there  was  almost  silence, 
even  over  the  trenches.  But  as  the  first  faint  glow  of 
dawn  crept  through  the  darkness  the  rifle-fire  burst  out 
again  feverishly,  and  the  machine-guns  clucked  with  new 
spasms  of  ferocity.  The  boys  of  the  New  Army,  and  the 
Germans  facing  them,  had  an  attack  of  the  nerves,  as 
always  at  that  hour. 

The  flares  were  still  rising,  but  had  the  debauched  look 
of  belated  fireworks  after  a  night  of  orgy. 

In  a  distant  field  a  cock  crew. 

The  dawn  lightened  all  the  sky,  and  the  shadows  crept 
away  from  the  ruins  of  Ypres,  and  all  the  ghastly  wreck- 


100  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

age  of  the  city  was  revealed  again  nakedly.  Then  the 
guns  ceased  for  a  while,  and  there  was  quietude  in  the 
trenches,  and  out  of  Ypres,  sneaking  by  side  ways,  went 
two  tired  figures,  padding  the  hoof  with  a  slouching  swift- 
ness to  escape  the  early  morning  "hate"  which  was  sure 
to  come  as  soon  as  a  clock  in  Vlamertinghe  still  working  in 
a  ruined  tower  chimed  the  hour  of  six. 

I  went  through  Ypres  scores  of  times  afterward,  and 
during  the  battles  of  Plunders  saw  it  day  by  day  as  col- 
umns of  men  and  guns  and  pack-mules  and  transports 
went  up  toward  the  ridge  which  led  at  last  to  Passchen- 
daele.  We  had  big  guns  in  the  ruins  of  Ypres,  and  round 
about,  and  they  fired  with  violent  concussions  which 
shook  loose  stones,  and  their  flashes  were  red  through  the 
Flanders  mist.  Always  this  capital  of  the  battlefields 
was  sinister,  with  the  sense  of  menace  about. 

"Steel  helmets  to  be  worn.     Gas-masks  at  the  alert." 

So  said  the  traffic  man  at  the  crossroads. 

As  one  strapped  on  one's  steel  helmet  and  shortened 
the  strap  of  one's  gas-mask,  the  spirit  of  Ypres  touched 
one's  soul  icily. 

IX 

The  worst  school  of  war  for  the  sons  of  gentlemen  was, 
in  those  early  days,  and  for  long  afterward,  Hooge.  That 
was  the  devil's  playground  and  his  chamber  of  horrors, 
wherein  he  devised  merry  tortures  for  young  Christian 
men.  It  was  not  far  out  of  Ypres,  to  the  left  of  the  Menin 
road,  and  to  the  north  of  Zouave  Wood  and  Sanctuary 
Wood.  For  a  time  there  was  a  chateau  there  called  the 
White  Chateau,  with  excellent  stables  and  good  accom- 
modation for  one  of  our  brigade  staffs,  until  one  of  our 
generals  was  killed  and  others  wounded  by  a  shell,  which 
broke  up  their  conference.  Afterward  there  was  no 
chateau,  but  only  a  rubble  of  bricks  banked  up  with  sand- 
bags and  deep  mine-craters  filled  with  stinking  water 
slopping  over  from  the  Bellewarde  Lake  and  low-lying 
pools.     Bodies,  and  bits  of  bodies,  and  clots  of  blood,  and 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       loi 

green  metallic-looking  slime,  made  by  explosive  gases, 
were  floating  on  the  surface  of  that  water  below  the  crater 
banks  when  I  first  passed  that  way,  and  so  it  was  always. 
Our  men  lived  there  and  died  there  within  a  few  yards  of 
the  enemy,  crouched  below  the  sand-bags  and  burrowed 
in  the  sides  of  the  crater.  Lice  crawled  over  them  in 
legions.  Human  flesh,  rotting  and  stinking,  mere  pulp, 
was  pasted  into  the  mud-banks.  If  they  dug  to  get 
deeper  cover  their  shovels  went  into  the  softness  of  dead 
bodies  who  had  been  their  comrades.  Scraps  of  flesh, 
booted  legs,  blackened  hands,  eyeless  heads,  came  falling 
over  them  when  the  enemy  trench-mortared  their  position 
or  blew  up  a  new  mine-shaft. 

I  remember  one  young  Irish  officer  who  came  down  to 
our  quarters  on  a  brief  respite  from  commanding  the 
garrison  at  Hooge.  He  was  a  handsome  fellow,  Hke 
young  PhiHp  of  Spain  by  Velasquez,  and  he  had  a  pro- 
found melancholy  in  his  eyes  in  spite  of  a  charming  smile. 

"Do  you  mind  if  I  have  a  bath  before  I  join  you.^*"  he 
asked. 

He  walked  about  in  the  open  air  until  the  bath  was 
ready.     Even  there  a  strong,  fetid  smell  came  from  him. 

"Hooge,"  he  said,  in  a  thoughtful  way,  "is  not  a  health 
resort." 

He  was  more  cheerful  after  his  bath  and  did  not  feel 
quite  such  a  leper.  He  told  one  or  two  stories  about  the 
things  that  happened  at  Hooge,  and  I  wondered  if  hell 
could  be  so  bad.  After  a  short  stay  he  went  back  again, 
and  I  could  see  that  he  expected  to  be  killed.  Before 
saying  good-by  he  touched  some  flowers  on  the  mess- 
table,  and  for  a  moment  or  two  listened  to  birds  twitter- 
ing in  the  trees. 

"Thanks  very  much,"  he  said.  "IVe  enjoyed  this 
visit  a  good  deal.  .  .  .  Good-by." 

He  went  back  through  Ypres  on  the  way  to  Hooge, 
and  the  mine-crater  where  his  Irish  soldiers  were  lying  in 
slime,  in  which  vermin  crawled. 

Sometimes  it  was  the  enemy  who  mined   under  our 


I02  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

position,  blowing  a  few  men  to  bits  and  scattering  the 
sand-bags.  Sometimes  it  was  our  men  who  upheaved 
the  earth  beyond  them  by  mine  charges  and  rushed  the 
new  crater. 

It  was  in  July  of  '15  that  the  devils  of  Hooge  became 
merry  and  bright  with  increased  activity.  The  Germans 
had  taken  possession  of  one  of  the  mine-craters  which 
formed  the  apex  of  a  triangle  across  the  Menin  road, 
with  trenches  running  down  to  it  on  either  side,  so  that 
it  was  like  the  spear-head  of  their  position.  They  had 
fortified  it  with  sand-bags  and  crammed  it  with  machine- 
guns  which  could  sweep  the  ground  on  three  sides,  so 
making  a  direct  attack  by  infantry  a  suicidal  enterprise. 
Our  trenches  immediately  faced  this  stronghold  from  the 
other  side  of  a  road  at  right  angles  with  the  Menin  road, 
and  our  men — the  New  Army  boys — were  shelled  day 
and  night,  so  that  many  of  them  were  torn  to  pieces,  and 
others  buried  alive,  and  others  sent  mad  by  shell-shock. 
(They  were  learning  their  lessons  in  the  school  of  courage.) 
It  was  decided  by  a  conference  of  generals,  not  at  Hooge, 
to  clear  out  this  hornets'  nest,  and  the  job  was  given  to 
the  sappers,  who  mined  under  the  roadway  toward  the 
redoubt,  while  our  heavy  artillery  shelled  the  enemy's 
position  all  around  the  neighborhood. 

On  July  22d  the  mine  was  exploded,  while  our  men 
crouched  low,  horribly  afraid  after  hours  of  suspense. 
The  earth  was  rent  asunder  by  a  gust  of  flame,  and  vom- 
ited up  a  tumult  of  soil  and  stones  and  human  limbs  and 
bodies.  Our  men  still  crouched  while  these  things  fell 
upon  them. 

"I  thought  I  had  been  blown  to  bits,"  one  of  them  told 
me.  "I  was  a  quaking  fear,  with  my  head  in  the  earth. 
I  kept  saying,  'Christ!  .  .  .  Christ!'" 

When  the  earth  and  smoke  had  settled  again  it  was 
seen  that  the  enemy's  redoubt  had  ceased  to  exist.  In 
its  place,  where  there  had  been  a  crisscross  of  trenches 
and  sand-bag  shelters  for  their  machine-guns  and  a  net- 
work of  barbed  wire,  there  was  now  an  enormous  crater, 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       103 

hollowed  deep  with  shelving  sides  surrounded  by  tumbled 
earth  heaps  which  had  blocked  up  the  enemy's  trenches 
on  either  side  of  the  position,  so  that  they  could  not  rush 
into  the  cavern  and  take  possession.  It  was  our  men 
who  "rushed"  the  crater  and  lay  there  panting  in  its 
smoking  soil. 

Our  generals  had  asked  for  trouble  when  they  destroyed 
that  redoubt,  and  our  men  had  it.  Infuriated  by  a  mas- 
sacre of  their  garrison  in  the  mine-explosion  and  by  the 
loss  of  their  spear-head,  the  Germans  kept  up  a  furious 
bombardment  on  our  trenches  in  that  neighborhood  in 
bursts  of  gun-fire  which  tossed  our  earthworks  about 
and  killed  and  wounded  many  men.  Our  line  at  Hooge 
at  that  time  was  held  by  the  King's  Royal  Rifles  of  the 
14th  Division,  young  fellows,  not  far  advanced  in  the 
training-school  of  war.  They  held  on  under  the  gunning 
of  their  positions,  and  each  man  among  them  wondered 
whether  it  was  the  shell  screeching  overhead  or  the  next 
which  would  smash  him  into  pulp  Hke  those  bodies  lying 
nearby  in  dugouts  and  upheaved  earthworks. 

On  the  morning  of  July  30th  there  was  a  strange  lull  of 
silence  after  a  heavy  bout  of  shells  and  mortars.  Men  of 
the  K.  R.  R.  raised  their  heads  above  broken  parapets 
and  crawled  out  of  shell-holes  and  looked  about.  There 
were  many  dead  bodies  lying  around,  and  wounded  men 
were  wailing.  The  unwounded,  startled  by  the  silence, 
became  aware  of  some  moisture  falling  on  them;  thick, 
oily  drops  of  liquid. 

*'What  in  hell's  name — ?"  said  a  subaltern. 

One  man  smelled  his  clothes,  which  reeked  of  something 
like  paraffin. 

Coming  across  from  the  German  trenches  were  men 
hunched  up  under  some  heavy  weights.  They  were 
carrying  cylinders  with  nozles  like  hose-pipes.  Suddenly 
there  was  a  rushing  noise  like  an  escape  of  air  from  some 
blast-furnace.  Long  tongues  of  flame  licked  across  to 
the  broken  ground  where  the  King's  Royal  Rifles  lay. 


I04  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Some  of  them  were  set  on  fire,  their  clothes  burnmg  on 
them,  making  them  Hving  torches,  and  in  a  second  or 
two  cinders. 

It  was  a  new  horror  of  war — the  Flammenwerfer. 

Some  of  the  men  leaped  to  their  feet,  cursing,  and  fired 
repeatedly  at  the  Germans  carrying  the  flaming  jets. 
Here  and  there  the  shots  were  true.  A  man  hunched 
under  a  cylinder  exploded  hke  a  fat  moth  caught  in  a 
candle-flame.  But  that  advancing  line  of  fire  after  the 
long  bombardment  was  too  much  for  the  rank  and  file, 
whose  clothes  were  smoking  and  whose  bodies  were 
scorched.  In  something  like  a  panic  they  fell  back, 
abandoning  the  cratered  ground  in  which  their  dead  lay. 

The  news  of  this  disaster  and  of  the  new  horror  reached 
the  troops  in  reserve,  who  had  been  resting  in  the  rear 
after  a  long  spell.  They  moved  up  at  once  to  support 
their  comrades  and  make  a  counter-attack.  The  ground 
they  had  to  cover  was  swept  by  machine-guns,  and  many 
fell,  but  the  others  attacked  again  and  again,  regardless 
of  their  losses,  and  won  back  part  of  the  lost  ground, 
leaving  only  a  depth  of  five  hundred  yards  in  the  enemy's 
hands. 

So  the  position  remained  until  the  morning  of  August 
9th,  when  a  new  attack  was  begun  by  the  Durham,  York- 
shire, Lancashire,  and  Midland  troops  of  the  6th  Division, 
who  had  been  long  in  the  salient  and  had  proved  the 
quality  of  northern  "grit"  in  the  foul  places  and  the  foul 
weather  of  that  region. 

It  was  late  on  the  night  of  August  8th  that  these  battal- 
ions took  up  their  position,  ready  for  the  assault.  These 
men,  who  came  mostly  from  mines  and  workshops,  were 
hard  and  steady  and  did  not  show  any  outward  sign  of 
nervousness,  though  they  knew  well  enough  that  before 
the  light  of  another  day  came  their  numbers  would  have 
passed  through  the  lottery  of  this  game  of  death.  Each 
man's  life  depended  on  no  more  than  a  fluke  of  luck  by 
^he  throw  of  those  dice  which  explode  as  they  fall,    They 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       105 

knew  what  their  job  was.  It  was  to  cross  five  hundred 
yards  of  open  ground  to  capture  and  to  hold  a  certain 
part  of  the  German  position  near  the  Chateau  of  Hooge. 

They  were  at  the  apex  of  the  triangle  which  made  a 
German  saHent  after  the  ground  was  lost,  on  July  30th. 
On  the  left  side  of  the  triangle  was  Zouave  Wood,  and 
Sanctuary  Wood  ran  up  the  right  side  to  a  strong  fort 
held  by  the  enemy  and  crammed  with  machine-guns  and 
every  kind  of  bomb.  The  base  of  the  upturned  triangle 
was  made  by  the  Menin  road,  to  the  north,  beyond  which 
lay  the  crater,  the  chateau,  and  the  stables. 

The  way  that  lay  between  the  regiment  and  their  goal 
was  not  an  easy  one  to  pass.  It  was  cut  and  crosscut  by 
our  old  trenches,  now  held  by  the  enemy,  who  had  made 
tangles  of  barbed  wire  in  front  of  their  parapets,  and  had 
placed  machine-guns  at  various  points.  The  ground  was 
littered  with  dead  bodies  belonging  to  the  battle  of  July 
30th,  and  pock-marked  by  deep  shell-holes.  To  cross  five 
hundred  yards  of  such  ground  in  the  storm  of  the  enemy's 
fire  would  be  an  ordeal  greater  than  that  of  rushing  from 
one  trench  to  another.  It  would  have  to  be  done  in 
regular  attack  formation,  and  with  the  best  of  luck  would 
be  a  grim  and  costly  progress. 

The  night  was  pitch  dark.  The  men  drawn  up  could 
only  see  one  another  as  shadows  blacker  than  the  night. 
They  were  very  quiet;  each  man  was  fighting  down  his 
fear  in  his  soul,  trying  to  get  a  grip  on  nerves  hideously 
strained  by  the  rack  of  this  suspense.  The  words,  **  Steady^ 
lads,"  were  spoken  down  the  ranks  by  young  lieutenants 
and  sergeants.  The  sounds  of  men  whispering,  a  cough 
here  and  there,  a  word  of  command,  the  clink  of  bayonets, 
the  cracking  of  twigs  under  heavy  boots,  the  shufile  of 
troops  getting  into  line,  would  not  carry  with  any  loud- 
ness to  German  ears. 

The  men  deployed  before  dawn  broke,  waiting  for  the 
preliminary  bombardment  which  would  smash  a  way  for 
them.  The  officers  struck  matches  now  and  then  to 
glance  at  their  wrist-watches,  set  very  carefully  to  those 


io6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

of  the  gunners.  Then  our  artillery  burst  forth  with  an 
enormous  violence  of  shell-fire,  so  that  the  night  was 
shattered  with  the  tumult  of  it.  Guns  of  every  caliber 
mingled  their  explosions,  and  the  long  screech  of  the  shells 
rushed  through  the  air  as  though  thousands  of  engines 
were  chasing  one  another  madly  through  a  vast  junction 
in  that  black  vault. 

The  men  listened  and  waited.  As  soon  as  the  guns 
lengthened  their  fuses  the  infantry  advance  would  begin. 
Their  nerves  were  getting  jangled.  It  was  just  the  tort- 
ure of  human  animals.  There  was  an  indrawing  of 
breath  when  suddenly  the  enemy  began  to  fire  rockets, 
sending  up  flares  which  made  white  waves  of  light.  If 
they  were  seen!     There  would  be  a  shambles. 

But  the  smoke  of  all  the  bursting  shells  rolled  up  in  a 
thick  veil,  hiding  those  mining  lads  who  stared  toward 
the  illuminations  above  the  black  vapors  and  at  the 
flashes  which  seemed  to  stab  great  rents  in  the  pall  of 
smoke.  "It  was  a  jumpy  moment,"  said  the  colonel  of 
the  Durhams,  and  the  moment  lengthened  into  minutes. 

Then  the  time  came.  The  watch  hands  pointed  to  the 
second  which  had  been  given  for  the  assault  to  begin,  and 
instantly,  to  the  tick,  the  guns  hfted  and  made  a  curtain 
of  fire  round  the  Chateau  of  Hooge,  beyond  the  Menin 
road,  six  hundred  yards  away. 

"Time!" 

The  company  officers  blew  their  whistles,  and  there  was 
a  sudden  clatter  from  trench-spades  slung  to  rifle-barrels, 
and  from  men  girdled  with  hand-grenades,  as  the  ad- 
vancing companies  deployed  and  made  their  first  rush 
forward.  The  ground  had  been  churned  up  by  our  shells, 
and  the  trenches  had  been  battered  into  shapelessness, 
strewn  with  broken  wire  and  heaps  of  loose  stones  and 
fragments  of  steel. 

It  seemed  impossible  that  any  German  should  be  left 
aHve  in  this  quagmire,  but  there  was  still  a  rattle  of 
machine-guns  from  holes  and  hillocks.  Not  for  long. 
The    bombing-parties    searched    and    found    them,    and 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       107 

silenced  them.  From  the  heaps  of  earth  which  had  once 
been  trenches  German  soldiers  rose  and  staggered  in  a 
dazed,  drunken  way,  stupefied  by  the  bombardment 
beneath  which  they  had  crouched. 

Our  men  spitted  them  on  their  bayonets  or  hurled 
hand-grenades,  and  swept  the  ground  before  them.  Some 
Germans  screeched  like  pigs  in  a  slaughter-house. 

The  men  went  on  in  short  rushes.  They  were  across 
the  Menin  road  now,  and  were  first  to  the  crater,  though 
other  troops  were  advancing  quickly  from  the  left.  They 
went  down  into  the  crater,  shouting  hoarsely,  and  hurling 
bombs  at  Germans,  who  were  caught  like  rats  in  a  trap, 
and  scurried  up  the  steep  sides  beyond,  firing  before 
rolling  down  again,  until  at  least  two  hundred  bodies  lay 
dead  at  the  bottom  of  this  pit  of  hell. 

While  some  of  the  men  dug  themselves  into  the  crater 
or  held  the  dugouts  already  made  by  the  enemy,  others 
climbed  up  to  the  ridge  beyond  and  with  a  final  rush, 
almost  winded  and  spent,  reached  the  extreme  limit  of 
their  line  of  assault  and  achieved  the  task  which  had  been 
set  them.  They  were  mad  now,  not  human  in  their 
senses.  They  saw  red  through  bloodshot  eyes.  They 
were  beasts  of  prey— these  decent  Yorkshire  lads. 

Round  the  stables  themselves  three  hundred  Germans 
were  bayoneted,  until  not  a  single  enemy  lived  on  this 
ground,  and  the  light  of  day  on  that  9th  of  August  re- 
vealed a  bloody  and  terrible  scene,  not  decent  for  words 
to  tell.  Not  decent,  but  a  shambles  of  human  flesh  which 
had  been  a  panic-stricken  crowd  of  living  men  crying  for 
mercy,  with  that  dreadful  screech  of  terror  from  German 
boys  who  saw  the  white  gleam  of  steel  at  their  stomachs 
before  they  were  spitted.  Not  many  of  those  Durham 
and  Yorkshire  lads  remain  alive  now  with  that  memory. 
The  few  who  do  must  have  thrust  it  out  of  their  vision, 
unless  at  night  it  haunts  them. 

The  assaulting  battalion  had  lost  many  men  during 
the  assault,  but  their  main  ordeal  came  after  the  first 


io8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

advance,  when  the  German  guns  belched  out  a  large 
quantity  of  heavy  shells  from  the  direction  of  Hill  60. 
They  raked  the  ground,  and  tried  to  make  our  men  yield 
the  position  they  had  gained.  But  they  v^ould  not  go 
back  or  crawl  away  from  their  dead. 

All  through  the  day  the  bombardment  continued,  an- 
swered from  our  side  by  fourteen  hours  of  concentrated 
fire,  which  I  watched  from  our  battery  positions.  In 
spite  of  the  difficulties  of  getting  up  supplies  through  the 
"crumped"  trenches,  the  men  held  on  and  consolidated 
their  positions.  One  of  the  most  astounding  feats  was 
done  by  the  sappers,  who  put  up  barbed  wire  beyond  the 
line  under  a  devilish  cannonade. 

A  telephone  operator  had  had  his  apparatus  smashed 
by  a  shell  early  in  the  action,  and  worked  his  way  back 
to  get  another.  He  succeeded  in  reaching  the  advanced 
line  again,  but  another  shell  knocked  out  his  second 
instrument.  It  was  then  only  possible  to  keep  in  touch 
with  the  battalion  headquarters  by  means  of  messengers, 
and  again  and  again  officers  and  men  made  their  way 
across  the  zone  of  fire  or  died  in  the  attempt.  Messages 
reached  the  colonel  of  the  regiment  that  part  of  his  front 
trenches  had  been  blown  away. 

From  other  parts  of  the  fine  reports  came  in  that  the 
enemy  was  preparing  a  counter-attack.  For  several 
hours  now  the  colonel  of  the  Durhams  could  not  get  into 
touch  with  his  companies,  isolated  and  hidden  beneath 
the  smoke  of  the  shell-bursts.  Flag-wagging  and  helio- 
graphing  were  out  of  the  question.  He  could  not  tell 
even  if  a  single  man  remained  alive  out  there  beneath  all 
those  shells.  No  word  came  from  them  now  to  let  him 
know  if  the  enemy  were  counter-attacking. 

Early  in  the  afternoon  he  decided  to  go  out  and  make 
his  own  reconnaissance.  The  bombardment  was  still  re- 
lentless, and  it  was  only  possible  to  go  part  of  the  way  in 
an  old  communication  trench.  The  ground  about  was 
littered  with  the  dead,  still  being  blown  about  by  high 
explosive?;, 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       109 

The  soul  of  the  colonel  was  heavy  then  with  doubt 
and  with  the  knowledge  that  most  of  the  dead  here  were 
his  own.  When  he  told  me  this  adventure  his  only  com- 
ment was  the  soldier's  phrase,  *'It  was  not  what  might 
be  called  a  'healthy'  place."  He  could  see  no  sign  of  a 
counter-attack,  but,  straining  through  the  smoke-clouds, 
his  eyes  could  detect  no  sign  of  Hfe  where  his  men  had 
been  holding  the  captured  lines.  Were  they  all  dead  out 
there? 

On  Monday  night  the  colonel  was  told  that  his  battalion 
would  be  relieved,  and  managed  to  send  this  order  to  a 
part  of  it.  It  was  sent  through  by  various  routes,  but 
some  men  who  carried  it  came  back  with  the  news  that 
it  was  still  impossible  to  get  into  touch  with  the  com- 
panies holding  the  advanced  positions  above  the  Menin 
road. 

In  trying  to  do  so  they  had  had  astounding  escapes. 
Several  of  them  had  been  blown  as  far  as  ten  yards  by 
the  air-pressure  of  exploding  shells  and  had  been  buried 
in  the  scatter  of  earth. 

"When  at  last  my  men  came  back — ^those  of  them  who 
had  received  the  order,"  said  the  colonel,  "I  knew  the 
price  of  their  achievement — its  cost  in  officers  and  men." 
He  spoke  as  a  man  resentful  of  that  bloody  sacrifice. 

There  were  other  men  still  alive  and  still  holding  on. 
With  some  of  them  were  four  young  officers,  who  clung 
to  their  ground  all  through  the  next  night,  before  being 
relieved.  They  were  without  a  drop  of  water  and  suf- 
fered the  extreme  miseries  of  the  battlefield. 

There  was  no  distinction  in  courage  between  those  four 
men,  but  the  greater  share  of  suffering  was  borne  by  one. 
Early  in  the  day  he  had  had  his  jaw  broken  by  a  piece  of 
shell,  but  still  led  his  men.  Later  in  the  day  he  was 
wounded  in  the  shoulder  and  leg,  but  kept  his  com- 
mand, and  he  was  still  leading  the  survivors  of  his 
company  when  he  came  back  on  the  morning  of  Tuesday, 
August  loth. 

Another  party  of  men  had  even  a  longer  time  of  trial. 


no  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

They  were  under  the  command  of  a  lance-corporal,  who 
had  gained  possession  of  the  stables  above  the  Menin 
road  and  now  defended  their  ruins.  During  the  previous 
twenty-four  hours  he  had  managed  to  send  through  sev- 
eral messages,  but  they  were  not  to  report  his  exposed 
position  nor  to  ask  for  supports  nor  to  request  relief. 
What  he  said  each  time  was,  "Send  us  more  bombs."  It 
was  only  at  seven-thirty  in  the  morning  of  Tuesday,  after 
thirty  hours  under  shell-fire,  that  the  survivors  came  away 
from  their  rubbish  heap  in  the  lines  of  death. 

So  it  was  at  Hooge  on  that  day  of  August.  I  talked 
with  these  men,  touched  hands  with  them  while  the  mud 
and  blood  of  the  business  still  fouled  them.  Even  now, 
in  remembrance,  I  wonder  how  men  could  go  through 
such  hours  without  having  on  their  faces  more  traces  of 
their  hell,  though  some  of  them  were  still  shaking  with  a 
kind  of  ague. 


Here  and  there  on  the  roadsides  behind  the  lines  queer 
sacks  hung  from  wooden  poles.  They  had  round,  red 
disks  painted  on  them,  and  looked  like  the  trunks  of 
human  bodies  after  Red  Indians  had  been  doing  decora- 
tive work  with  their  enemy's  slain.  At  FHxecourt,  near 
Amiens,  I  passed  one  on  a  Sunday  when  bells  were  ringing 
for  high  mass  and  a  crowd  of  young  soldiers  were  troop- 
ing into  the  field  with  fixed  bayonets. 

A  friend  of  mine — an  ironical  fellow — nudged  me,  and 
said,  "Sunday-school  for  young  Christians!"  and  made  a 
hideous  face,  very  comical. 

It  was  a  bayonet-school  of  instruction,  and  "O.  C. 
Bayonets" — Col.  Ronald  Campbell— was  giving  a  little 
demonstration.  It  was  a  curiously  interesting  form  of 
exercise.  It  was  as  though  the  primitive  nature  in  man, 
which  had  been  sleeping  through  the  centuries,  was  sud- 
denly awakened  in  the  souls  of  these  cockney  soldier- 
boys.  They  made  sudden  jabs  at  one  another  fiercely 
and  with  savage  grimaces,  leaped  at  men  standing  with 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE  in 

their  backs  turned,  who  wheeled  round  sharply,  and 
crossed  bayonets,  and  taunted  the  attackers.  Then  they 
lunged  at  the  hanging  sacks,  stabbing  them  where  the  red 
circles  v/ere  painted.  These  inanimate  things  became 
revoltingly  lifelike  as  they  jerked  to  and  fro,  and  the 
bayonet  men  seemed  enraged  with  them.  One  fell  from 
the  rope,  and  a  boy  sprang  at  it,  dug  his  bayonet  in,  put 
his  foot  on  the  prostrate  thing  to  get  a  purchase  for  the 
bayonet,  which  he  lugged  out  again,  and  then  kicked  the 
sack. 

"That's  what  I  Hke  to  see,"  said  an  officer.  "There's 
a  fine  fighting-spirit  in  that  lad.  He'll  kill  plenty  of  Ger- 
mans before  he's  done." 

Col.  Ronald  Campbell  was  a  great  lecturer  on  bayonet 
exercise.  He  curdled  the  blood  of  boys  with  his  eloquence 
on  the  method  of  attack  to  pierce  liver  and  lights  and 
kidneys  of  the  enemy.  He  made  their  eyes  bulge  out  of 
their  heads,  fired  them  with  blood-lust,  stoked  up  hatred 
of  Germans — all  in  a  quiet,  earnest,  persuasive  voice,  and 
a  sense  of  latent  power  and  passion  in  him.  He  told 
funny  stories — one,  famous  in  the  army,  called  "Where's 
'Arry.?" 

It  was  the  story  of  an  attack  on  German  trenches  in 
which  a  crowd  of  Germans  were  captured  in  a  dugout. 
The  sergeant  had  been  told  to  blood  his  men,  and  during 
the  killing  he  turned  round  and  asked,  "Where's  'Arry? 
.  .  .  'Arry  'asn't  'ad  a  go  yet." 

'Arry  was  a  timid  boy,  who  shrank  from  butcher's 
work,  but  he  was  called  up  and  given  his  man  to  kill. 
And  after  that  'Arry  was  like  a  man-eating  tiger  in  his 
desire  for  German  blood. 

He  used  another  illustration  in  his  bayonet  lectures. 
"You  may  meet  a  German  who  says,  'Mercy!  I  have  ten 
children.'  .  .  .  Kill  him!     He  might  have  ten  more." 

At  those  training-schools  of  British  youth  (when  nature 
was  averse  to  human  slaughter  until  very  scientifically 
trained)  one  might  see  every  form  of  instruction  in  every 
kind  of  weapon  and  instrument  of  death — machine-guns, 


112  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

trench-mortars,  bombs,  torpedoes,  gas,  and,  later  on, 
tanks;  and  as  the  months  passed,  and  the  years,  the  youth 
of  the  British  Empire  graduated  in  these  schools  of  war, 
and  those  who  lived  longest  were  experts  in  divers  branches 
of  technical  education. 

Col.  Ronald  Campbell  retired  from  bayonet  instruction 
and  devoted  his  genius  and  his  heart  (which  was  bigger 
than  the  point  of  a  bayonet)  to  the  physical  instruction 
of  the  army  and  the  recuperation  of  battle-worn  men.  I 
liked  him  better  in  that  job,  and  saw  the  real  imagination 
of  the  man  at  work,  and  his  amazing,  self-taught  knowl- 
edge of  psychology.  When  men  came  down  from  the 
trenches,  dazed,  sullen,  stupid,  dismal,  broken,  he  set  to 
work  to  build  up  their  vitahty  again,  to  get  them  inter- 
ested in  hfe  again,  and  to  make  them  keen  and  alert. 
As  they  had  been  dehumanized  by  war,  so  he  rehumanized 
them  by  natural  means.  He  had  a  farm,  with  flowers 
and  vegetables,  pigs,  poultry,  and  queer  beasts.  A  tame 
bear  named  Flanagan  was  the  comic  character  of  the  camp. 
Colonel  Campbell  found  a  thousand  qualities  of  character 
in  this  animal,  and  brought  laughter  back  to  gloomy  boys 
by  his  description  of  them.  He  had  names  for  many  of 
his  pets — the  game-cocks  and  the  mother-hens;  and  he 
taught  the  men  to  know  each  one,  and  to  rear  chicks, 
and  tend  flowers,  and  grow  vegetables.  Love,  and  not 
hate,  was  now  his  gospel.  All  his  training  was  done  by 
games,  simple  games  arousing  intelligence,  leading  up  to 
elaborate  games  demanding  skill  of  hand  and  eye.  He 
challenged  the  whole  army  system  of  discipline  imposed 
by  authority  by  a  new  system  of  self-discipline  based 
upon  interest  and  instinct.  His  results  were  startling, 
and  men  who  had  been  dumb,  blear-eyed,  dejected, 
shell-shocked  wrecks  of  life  were  changed  quite  quickly 
into  bright,  cheery  fellows,  with  laughter  in  their 
eyes. 

"It's  a  pity,"  he  said,  "they  have  to  go  off  again  and 
be  shot  to  pieces.  I  cure  them  only  to  be  killed — but 
that's  not  my  fault,    It's  the  fault  of  war," 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       iij 

It  was  Colonel  Campbell  who  discovered  "Willie  Wood- 
bine," the  fighting  parson  and  soldier's  poet,  who  was 
the  leading  member  of  a  traveling  troupe  of  thick-eared 
thugs.  They  gave  pugilistic  entertainments  to  tired  men. 
Each  of  them  had  one  thick  ear.  Willie  Woodbine  had 
two.  They  fought  one  another  with  science  (as  old  pro- 
fessionals) and  challenged  any  man  in  the  crowd.  Then 
one  of  them  played  the  viohn  and  drew  the  soul  out  of 
soldiers  who  seemed  mere  animals,  and  after  another 
fight  Willie  Woodbine  stepped  up  and  talked  of  God,  and 
war,  and  the  weakness  of  men,  and  the  meaning  of  cour- 
age. He  held  all  those  fellows  in  his  hand,  put  a  spell  on 
them,  kept  them  excited  by  a  new  revelation,  gave  them, 
poor  devils,  an  extra  touch  of  courage  to  face  the  menace 
that  was  ahead  of  them  when  they  went  to  the  trenches 
again. 

XI 

Our  men  were  not  always  in  the  trenches.  As  the 
New  Army  grew  in  numbers  reliefs  were  more  frequent 
than  in  the  old  days,  when  battalions  held  the  line  for 
long  spells,  until  their  souls  as  well  as  their  bodies  were 
sunk  in  squalor.  Now  in  the  summer  of  191 5  it  was  not 
usual  for  men  to  stay  in  the  line  for  more  than  three  weeks 
at  a  stretch,  and  they  came  back  to  camps  and  billets, 
where  there  was  more  sense  of  Hfe,  though  still  the  chance 
of  death  from  long-range  guns.  Farther  back  still,  as  far 
back  as  the  coast,  and  all  the  way  between  the  sea  and 
the  edge  of  war,  there  were  new  battalions  quartered  in 
French  and  Flemish  villages,  so  that  every  cottage  and 
farmstead,  villa,  and  chateau  was  inhabited  by  men  in 
khaki,  who  made  themselves  at  home  and  established 
friendly  relations  with  civiHans  there  unless  they  were  too 
flagrant  in  their  robbery,  or  too  sour  in  their  temper,  or 
too  filthy  in  their  habits.  Generally  the  British  troops 
were  popular  in  Picardy  and  Artois,  and  when  they  left 
women  kissed  and  cried,  in  spite  of  laughter,  and  joked  in 
a  queer  jargon  of  English-French.     In  the  estaminets  of 


114  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

France  and  Flanders  they  danced  with  frowzy  peasant 
girls  to  the  tune  of  a  penny-in-the-slot  piano,  or,  failing 
the  girls,  danced  with  one  another. 

For  many  years  to  come,  perhaps  for  centuries,  those 
cottages  and  barns  into  which  our  men  crowded  will 
retain  signs  and  memories  of  that  British  occupation  in 
the  great  war.  Boys  who  afterward  went  forward  to 
the  fighting-fields  and  stepped  across  the  line  to  the  world 
of  ghosts  carved  their  names  on  wooden  beams,  and  on 
the  whitew^ashed  walls  scribbled  legends  proclaiming  that 
Private  John  Johnson  was  a  bastard;  or  that  a  certain 
battalion  was  a  rabble  of  rufiians;  or  that  Kaiser  Bill 
would  die  on  the  gallows,  illustrating  those  remarks  with 
portraits  and  allegorical  devices,  sketchily  drawn,  but 
vivid  and  significant. 

The  soldier  in  the  house  learned  quite  a  lot  of  French, 
with  which  he  made  his  needs  understood  by  the  elderly 
woman  v/ho  cooked  for  his  officers'  mess.  He  could  say, 
with  a  fine  fluency,  "Ou  est  le  blooming  couteau?"  or 
"Donnez-moi  le  bally  fourchette,  s'il  vous  plait,  madame.'* 
It  was  not  beyond  his  vocabulary  to  explain  that  "Les 
pommes  de  terre  frites  are  absolument  all  right  if  only 
madame  will  tenir  ses  cheveux  on."  In  the  courtyards 
of  ancient  farmhouses,  so  old  in  their  timbers  and  gables 
that  the  Scottish  bodyguard  of  Louis  XI  may  have 
passed  them  on  their  way  to  Paris,  modern  Scots  with 
khaki-covered  kilts  pumped  up  the  water  from  old  wells, 
and  whistled  "I  Know  a  Lassie"  to  the  girl  who  brought 
the  cattle  home,  and  munched  their  evening  rations  while 
Sandy  played  a  "wee  bit"  on  the  pipes  to  the  peasant- 
folk  who  gathered  at  the  gate.  Such  good  relations 
existed  between  the  cottagers  and  their  temporary  guests 
that  one  day,  for  instance,  when  a  young  friend  of  mine 
came  back  from  a  long  spell  in  the  trenches  (his  conversa- 
tion was  of  dead  men,  flies,  bombs,  lice,  and  hell),  the  old 
lady  who  had  given  him  her  best  bedroom  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war  flung  her  arms  about  him  and  greeted  him  like 
a  long-lost  son.     To  a  young  Guardsman,  with  his  unde- 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       115 

veloped  mustache  on  his  upper  lip,  her  demonstrations 
were  embarrassing. 

It  was  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  the  war  that  beauty 
lived  but  a  mile  or  two  away  from  hideous  squalor. 
While  men  in  the  lines  lived  in  dugouts  and  marched  down 
communicating  trenches  thigh-high,  after  rainy  weather, 
in  mud  and  water,  and  suffered  the  beastliness  of  the 
primitive  earth-men,  those  who  were  out  of  the  trenches, 
turn  and  turn  about,  came  back  to  leafy  villages  and  drilled 
in  fields  all  golden  with  buttercups,  and  were  not  too  un- 
comfortable in  spite  of  overcrowding  in  dirty  barns. 

There  was  more  than  comfort  in  some  of  the  head- 
quarters where  our  officers  were  billeted  in  French  cha- 
teaux. There  was  a  splendor  of  surroundings  which  gave 
a  graciousness  and  elegance  to  the  daily  life  of  that 
extraordinar}'  war  in  which  men  fought  as  brutally  as  in 
prehistoric  times.  I  knew  scores  of  such  places,  and 
went  through  gilded  gates  emblazoned  with  noble  coats 
of  arms  belonging  to  the  days  of  the  Sun  King,  or  farther 
back  to  the  Valois,  and  on  my  visits  to  generals  and  their 
staffs  stood  on  long  flights  of  steps  which  led  up  to  old 
mansions,  with  many  towers  and  turrets,  surrounded  by 
noble  parks  and  ornamental  waters  and  deep  barns  in 
which  five  centuries  of  harvests  had  been  stored.  From 
one  of  the  archways  here  one  might  see  in  the  mind's  eye 
Mme.  de  Pompadour  come  out  with  a  hawk  on  her  wrist, 
or  even  Henri  de  Navarre  with  his  gentlemen-at-arms,  all 
their  plumes  ahght  in  the  sun  as  they  mounted  their 
horses  for  a  morning's  boar-hunt. 

It  was  surprising  at  first  when  a  young  British  officer 
came  out  and  said,  "Toppin'  morning,"  or,  **Any  news 
from  the  Dardanelles?"  There  was  something  incon- 
gruous about  this  habitation  of  French  chateaux  by 
British  officers  with  their  war-kit.  The  strangeness  of 
it  made  me  laugh  in  early  days  of  first  impressions, 
when  I  went  through  the  rooms  of  one  of  those  old 
historic  houses,  well  within  range  of  the  German   guns, 


ii6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

with  a  brigade  major.  It  was  the  Chateau  de  Henen- 
court,  near  Albert. 

"This  is  the  general's  bedroom,"  said  the  brigade 
major,  opening  a  door  which  led  off  a  gallery,  in  which 
many  beautiful  women  of  France  and  many  great 
nobles  of  the  old  regime  looked  down  from  their  gilt 
frames. 

The  general  had  a  nice  bed  to  sleep  in.  In  such  a  bed 
Mme.  du  Barry  might  have  stretched  her  arms  and 
yawned,  or  the  beautiful  Duchesse  de  Mazarin  might  have 
held  her  morning  levee.  A  British  general,  with  his 
bronzed  face  and  bristly  mustache,  would  look  a  little 
strange  under  that  blue-silk  canopy,  with  rosy  cherubs 
dancing  overhead  on  the  flowered  ceiling.  His  top-boots 
and  spurs  stood  next  to  a  Louis  Quinze  toilet-table.  His 
leather  belts  and  field-glasses  lay  on  the  polished  boards 
beneath  the  tapestry  on  which  Venus  wooed  Adonis  and 
Diana  went  a-hunting.  In  other  rooms  no  less  elegantly 
rose-tinted  or  darkly  paneled  other  officers  had  made  a 
litter  of  their  bags,  haversacks,  rubber  baths,  trench- 
boots,  and  puttees.  At  night  the  staff'  sat  down  to  dinner 
in  a  salon  where  the  portraits  of  a  great  family  of  France, 
in  silks  and  satins  and  Pompadour  wigs,  looked  down 
upon  their  khaki.  The  owner  of  the  chateau,  in  whose 
veins  flowed  the  blood  of  those  old  aristocrats,  was  away 
with  his  regiment,  in  which  he  held  the  rank  of  corporal. 
His  wife,  the  Comtesse  de  Henencourt,  managed  the  es- 
tate, from  which  all  the  men-servants  except  the  veterans 
had  been  mobilized.  In  her  own  chateau  she  kept  one 
room  for  herself,  and  every  morning  came  in  from  the 
dairies,  where  she  had  been  working  with  her  maids,  to 
say,  with  her  very  gracious  smile,  to  the  invaders  of  her 
house:  "Bon  jour,  messieurs!     Qa  va  bien?" 

She  hid  any  fear  she  had  under  the  courage  of  her  smile. 
Poor  chateaux  of  France!  German  shells  came  to  knock 
down  their  pointed  turrets,  to  smash  through  the  ceilings 
where  the  rosy  Cupids  played,  and  in  one  hour  or  two  to 
ruin  the  beauty  that  had  lived  through  centuries  of  pride, 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       117 

Scores  of  them  along  the  Hne  of  battle  were  but  heaps  of 
brick-dust  and  twisted  iron. 

I  saw  the  ruins  of  the  Chateau  de  Henencourt  two  years 
after  my  first  visit  there.  The  enemy's  line  had  come 
closer  to  it  and  it  was  a  target  for  their  guns.  Our  guns 
— heavy  and  light — ^were  firing  from  the  back  yard  and 
neighboring  fields,  with  deafening  tumult.  Shells  had 
already  broken  the  roofs  and  turrets  of  the  chateau  and 
torn  away  great  chunks  of  wall.  A  colonel  of  artillery 
had  his  headquarters  in  the  fetit  salon.  His  hand 
trembled  as  he  greeted  me. 

"I'm  not  fond  of  this  place,"  he  said.  "The  whole 
damn  thing  will  come  down  on  my  head  at  any  time.  I 
think  I  shall  take  to  the  cellars." 

We  walked  out  to  the  courtyard  and  he  showed  me  the 
way  down  to  the  vault.  A  shell  came  over  the  chateau 
and  burst  in  the  outhouses. 

"They  knocked  out  a  9.2  a  little  while  ago,"  said  the 
colonel.     "Made  a  mess  of  some  heavy  gunners." 

There  was  a  sense  of  imminent  death  about  us,  but  it 
was  not  so  sinister  a  place  as  farther  on,  where  a  brother 
of  mine  sat  in  a  hole  directing  his  battery.  .  .  .  The  Count- 
ess of  Henencourt  had  gone.  She  went  away  with  her 
dairymaids,  driving  her  cattle  down  the  roads. 

XII 

One  of  the  most  curious  little  schools  of  courage  in- 
habited by  British  soldiers  in  early  days  was  the  village 
of  Vaux-sur-Somme,  which  we  took  over  from  the  French, 
who  were  our  next-door  neighbors  at  the  village  of  Frise 
in  the  summer  of  '15.  After  the  foul  conditions  of  the 
salient  it  seemed  unreal  and  fantastic,  with  a  touch  of 
romance  not  found  in  other  places.  Strange  as  it  seemed, 
the  village  garrisoned  by  our  men  was  in  advance  of  our 
trench  lines,  with  nothing  dividing  them  from  the  enemy 
but  a  little  undergrowth — and  the  queerest  part  of  it  all 
was  the  sense  of  safety,  the  ridiculously  false  security 


ii8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

with  which  one  could  wander  about  the  village  and  up 
the  footpath  beyond,  with  the  knowledge  that  one's 
movements  were  being  watched  by  German  eyes  and  that 
the  whole  place  could  be  blown  off  the  face  of  the  earth 
.  .  .  but  for  the  convenient  fact  that  the  Germans,  who 
were  living  in  the  village  of  Curlu,  beyond  the  footpath, 
were  under  our  own  observation  and  at  the  mercy  of  our 
own  guns. 

That  sounded  like  a  fairy-tale  to  men  who,  in  other 
places,  could  not  go  over  the  parapet  of  the  first-line 
trenches,  or  even  put  their  heads  up  for  a  single  second, 
without  risking  instant  death. 

I  stood  on  a  hill  here,  with  a  French  interpreter  and 
one  of  his  men.  A  battalion  of  loyal  North  Lancashires 
was  some  distance  away,  but  after  an  exchange  of  com- 
pliments in  an  idyllic  glade,  where  a  party  of  French 
soldiers  lived  in  the  friendliest  juxtaposition  with  the 
British  infantry  surrounding  them — it  was  a  cheery 
bivouac  among  the  trees,  with  the  fragrance  of  a  stew-pot 
mingling  with  the  odor  of  burning  wood — the  lieutenant 
insisted  upon  leading  the  way  to  the  top  of  the  hill. 

He  made  a  slight  detour  to  point  out  a  German  shell 
which  had  fallen  there  without  exploding,  and  made 
laughing  comments  upon  the  harmless,  futile  character 
of  those  poor  Germans  in  front  of  us.  They  did  their 
best  to  kill  us,  but  oh,  so  feebly! 

Yet  when  I  took  a  pace  toward  the  shell  he  called 
out,  sharply,  "Ne  touchez  pas!"  I  would  rather  have 
touched  a  sleeping  tiger  than  that  conical  piece  of  metal 
with  its  unexploded  possibilities,  but  bent  low  to  see  the 
inscriptions  on  it,  scratched  by  French  gunners  with  more 
recklessness  of  death.  Mort  aux  Boches  was  scrawled 
upon  it  between  the  men's  initials. 

Then  we  came  to  the  hill-crest  and  to  the  last  of  our 
trenches,  and,  standing  there,  looked  down  upon  the  vil- 
lages of  Vaux  and  Curlu,  separated  by  a  piece  of  marshy 
water.  In  the  farthest  village  were  the  Germans,  and 
in  the  nearest,  just  below  us  down  the  steep  cliff,  our  own 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       119 

men.  Between  the  two  there  was  a  narrow  causeway 
across  the  marsh  and  a  strip  of  woods  half  a  rifle-shot  in 
length. 

Behind,  in  a  sweeping  semicircle  round  their  village 
and  ours,  were  the  German  trenches  and  the  German 
guns.  I  looked  into  the  streets  of  both  villages  as  clearly 
as  one  may  see  into  Clovelly  village  from  the  crest  of  the 
hill.  In  Vaux-sur-Somme  a  few  British  soldiers  were 
strolling  about.  One  was  sitting  on  the  window-sill  of 
a  cottage,  kicking  up  his  heels. 

In  the  German  village  of  Curlu  the  roadways  were  con- 
cealed by  the  perspective  of  the  houses,  with  their  gables 
and  chimney-stacks,  so  that  I  could  not  see  any  passers- 
by.  But  at  the  top  of  the  road,  going  out  of  the  village 
and  standing  outside  the  last  house  on  the  road,  was  a 
solitary  figure — a  German  sentry. 

The  French  lieutenant  pointed  to  a  thin  mast  away 
from  the  village  on  the  hillside. 

"Do  you  see  that."*  That  is  their  flagstaff.  They  hoist 
their  flag  for  victories.  It  wagged  a  good  deal  during  the 
recent  Russian  fighting.  But  lately  they  have  not  had 
the  cheek  to  put  it  up." 

This  interpreter — the  Baron  de  Rosen — laughed  very 
heartily  at  that  naked  pole  on  the  hill. 

Then  I  left  him  and  joined  our  own  men,  and  went 
down  a  steep  hill  into  Vaux,  well  outside  our  line  of 
trenches,  and  thrust  forward  as  an  outpost  in  the  marsh. 
German  eyes  could  see  me  as  I  walked.  At  any  moment 
those  little  houses  about  me  might  have  been  smashed 
into  rubbish  heaps.  But  no  shells  came  to  disturb  the 
waterfowl  among  the  reeds  around. 

And  so  it  was  that  the  hfe  in  this  place  was  utterly 
abnormal,  and  while  the  guns  were  silent  except  for  long- 
range  fire,  an  old-fashioned  mode  of  war — what  the  adju- 
tant of  this  little  outpost  called  a  "gentlemanly  warfare," 
prevailed.  Officers  and  men  slept  within  a  few  hundred 
yards  of  the  enemy,  and  the  officers  wore  their  pajamas 
at  night.     When  a  fight  took  place  it  was  a  chivalrous 


120  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

excursion,  such  as  Sir  Walter  Manny  would  have  liked, 
between  thirty  or  forty  men  on  one  side  against  somewhat 
the  same  number  on  the  other. 

Our  men  used  to  steal  out  along  the  causeway  which 
crossed  the  marsh — a  pathway  about  four  feet  wide, 
broadening  out  in  the  middle,  so  that  a  little  redoubt  or 
blockhouse  was  established  there,  then  across  a  narrow 
drawbridge,  then  along  the  path  again  until  they  came 
to  the  thicket  which  screened  the  German  village  of 
Curlu. 

It  sometimes  happened  that  a  party  of  Germans  were 
creeping  forward  from  the  other  direction,  in  just  the 
same  way,  disguised  in  party-colored  clothes  splashed  with 
greens  and  reds  and  browns  to  make  them  invisible  be- 
tween the  trees,  with  brown  masks  over  their  faces. 
Then  suddenly  contact  was  made. 

Into  the  silence  of  the  wood  came  the  sharp  crack  of 
rifles,  the  zip-zip  of  bullets,  the  shouts  of  men  who  had 
given  up  the  game  of  invisibility.  It  was  a  sharp  encoun- 
ter one  night  when  the  Loyal  North  Lancashires  held  the 
village  of  Vaux,  and  our  men  brought  back  many  German 
helmets  and  other  trophies  as  proofs  of  victory.  Then 
to  bed  in  the  village,  and  a  good  night's  rest,  as  when 
English  knights  fought  the  French,  not  far  from  these 
fields,  as  chronicled  in  the  pages  of  that  early  war  corre- 
spondent, Sir  John  Froissart. 

All  was  quiet  when  I  went  along  the  causeway  and  out 
into  the  wood,  where  the  outposts  stood  listening  for  any 
crack  of  a  twig  which  might  betray  a  German  footstep. 
I  was  startled  when  I  came  suddenly  upon  two  men, 
almost  invisible,  against  the  tree-trunks.  There  they 
stood,  motionless,  with  their  rifles  ready,  peering  through 
the  brushwood.  If  I  had  followed  the  path  on  which 
they  stood  for  just  a  little  way  I  should  have  walked 
into  the  German  village.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
should  not  have  walked  back  again.  .  .  . 

When  I  left  the  village,  and  climbed  up  the  hill  to  our 
own  trenches  again,  I  laughed  aloud  at  the  fantastic  visit 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       121 

to  that  grim  little  outpost  in  the  marsh.  If  all  the  war 
had  been  like  this  it  would  have  been  more  endurable  for 
men  who  had  no  need  to  hide  in  holes  in  the  earth,  nor 
crouch  for  three  months  belowground,  until  an  hour  or 
two  of  massacre  below  a  storm  of  high  explosives.  In 
the  village  on  the  marsh  men  fought  at  least  against  other 
men,  and  not  against  invisible  powers  which  belched 
forth  death. 

It  was  part  of  the  French  system  of  "keeping  quiet" 
until  the  turn  of  big  offensives;  a  good  system,  to  my 
mind,  if  not  carried  too  far.  At  Frise,  next  door  to  Vaux, 
in  a  loop  of  the  Somme,  it  was  carried  a  little  too  far, 
with  relaxed  vigilance. 

It  was  a  joke  of  our  soldiers  to  crawl  on  and  through 
the  reeds  and  enter  the  French  line  and  exchange  souvenirs 
with  the  sentries. 

"Souvenir!"  said  one  of  them  one  day.  "Bullet — you 
know — cartouche.     Comprenny?" 

A  French  poilu  of  Territorials,  who  had  been  dozing, 
sat  up  with  a  grin  and  said,  "Mais  oui,  mon  vieux," 
and  felt  in  his  pouch  for  a  cartridge,  and  then  in  his 
pockets,  and  then  in  the  magazine  of  the  rifle  between 
his  knees. 

"Fini!"  he  said.     "Tout  fini,  mon  p'tit  camarade." 

The  Germans  one  day  made  a  pounce  on  Frise,  that 
little  village  in  the  loop  of  the  Somme,  and  "pinched" 
every  man  of  the  French  garrison.  There  was  the  devil 
to  pay,  and  I  heard  it  being  played  to  the  tune  of  the 
French  soixante-qumzes,  slashing  over  the  trees. 

Vaux  and  Curlu  went  the  way  of  all  French  villages  in 
the  zone  of  war,  when  the  battles  of  the  Somme  began, 
and  were  blown  off  the  map. 

XIII 

At  a  place  called  the  Pont  de  Nieppe,  beyond  Armen- 
ti^res — a  most  "unhealthy"  place  in  later  years  of  war — ■ 
a  bathing  establishment  was  organized  by  officers  who 


122  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

were  as  proud  of  their  work  as  though  they  had  brought 
a  piece  of  paradise  to  Flanders.  To  be  fair  to  them,  they 
had  done  that.  To  any  interested  visitor,  understanding 
the  nobiHty  of  their  work,  they  exhibited  a  curious  rehc. 
It  was  the  Holy  Shirt  of  Nieppe,  which  should  be  treas- 
ured as  a  memorial  in  our  War  Museum — an  object- 
lesson  of  what  the  great  war  meant  to  clean-living  men. 
It  was  not  a  saint's  shirt,  but  had  been  worn  by  a  British 
officer  in  the  trenches,  and  was  like  tens  of  thousands  of 
other  shirts  worn  by  our  officers  and  men  in  the  first 
winters  of  the  war,  neither  better  nor  worse,  but  a  fair 
average  specimen.  It  had  been  framed  in  a  glass  case, 
and  revealed,  on  its  linen,  the  corpses  of  thousands  of  lice. 
That  vermin  swarmed  upon  the  bodies  of  all  our  boys 
who  went  into  the  trenches  and  tortured  them.  After 
three  days  they  were  lousy  from  head  to  foot.  After 
three  weeks  they  were  walking  menageries.  To  EngHsh 
boys  from  clean  homes,  to  young  officers  who  had  been 
brought  up  in  the  religion  of  the  morning  tub,  this  was 
one  of  the  worst  horrors  of  war.  They  were  disgusted 
with  themselves.  Their  own  bodies  were  revolting  to 
them.  Scores  of  times  I  have  seen  battahons  of  men 
just  out  of  battle  stripping  themselves  and  hunting  in 
their  shirts  for  the  foul  beast.  They  had  a  technical 
name  for  this  hunter's  job.  They  called  it  "chatting." 
They  desired  a  bath  as  the  hart  panteth  for  the  water- 
brooks,  and  baths  were  but  a  mirage  of  the  brain  to  men 
in  Flanders  fields  and  beyond  the  Somme,  until  here  and 
there,  as  at  Nieppe,  officers  with  human  sympathy  or- 
ganized a  system  by  which  battalions  of  men  could  wash 
their  bodies. 

The  place  in  Nieppe  had  been  a  jute-factory,  and  there 
were  big  tubs  in  the  sheds,  and  nearby  was  the  water  of 
the  Lys.  Boilers  were  set  going  to  heat  the  water.  A 
battalion's  shirts  were  put  into  an  oven  and  the  lice  were 
baked  and  killed.  It  was  a  splendid  thing  to  see  scores 
of  boys  wallowing  in  those  big  tubs,  six  in  a  tub,  with  a 
bit  of  soap  for  each.     They  gave  little  grunts  and  shouts 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       123 

of  joyous  satisfaction.  The  cleansing  water,  the  liquid 
heat,  made  their  flesh  tingle  with  exquisite  delight,  sen- 
suous and  spiritual.  They  were  like  children.  They 
splashed  one  another,  with  gurgles  of  laughter.  They  put 
their  heads  underwater  and  came  up  puffing  and  blowing 
like  grampuses.  Something  broke  in  one's  heart  to  see 
them,  those  splendid  boys  whose  bodies  might  soon  be 
torn  to  tatters  by  chunks  of  steel.  One  of  them  remem- 
bered a  bit  of  Latin  he  had  sung  at  Stonyhurst:  "Asperges 
mCy  Dominey  hyssopo,  et  mundahor;  lavahis  me,  et  super 
nivem  dealbabor."     ("Thou  shalt  sprinkle  me  with  hyssop, 

0  Lord,  and  I  shall  be  cleansed;  thou  shalt  wash  me,  and 

1  shall  be  made  whiter  than  snow.") 

On  the  other  side  of  the  lines  the  Germans  were  suffer- 
ing in  the  same  way,  lousy  also,  and  they,  too,  were  organ- 
izing bath-houses.  After  their  first  retreat  I  saw  a  queer 
name  on  a  wooden  shed:  Entlausunganstalt.  I  puzzled 
over  it  a  moment,  and  then  understood.  It  was  a  new 
word  created  out  of  the  dirt  of  modern  war — "Delousing 
station." 

XIV 

It  was  harvest-time  in  the  summer  of  '15,  and  Death 
was  not  the  only  reaper  who  went  about  the  fields,  al- 
though he  was  busy  and  did  not  rest  even  when  the  sun 
had  flamed  down  below  the  belt  of  trees  on  the  far  ridge, 
and  left  the  world  in  darkness. 

On  a  night  in  August  two  of  us  stood  in  a  cornfield, 
silent,  under  the  great  dome,  staring  up  at  the  startling 
splendor  of  it.  The  red  ball  just  showed  above  the  far 
line  of  single  trees  which  were  black  as  charcoal  on  the 
edge  of  a  long,  straight  road  two  miles  away,  and  from 
its  furnace  there  were  flung  a  million  feathers  of  flame 
against  the  silk-blue  canopy  of  the  evening  sky.  The 
burning  colors  died  out  in  a  few  minuces,  and  the  fields 
darkened,  and  all  the  corn-shocks  paled  until  they  became 
quite  white,  like  rows  of  tents,  under  the  harvest  moon. 
Another  night  had  come  in  this  year  of  war. 


124  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Up  Ypres  way  the  guns  were  busy,  and  at  regular  inter- 
vals the  earth  trembled,  and  the  air  vibrated  with  dull, 
thunderous  shocks. 

"The  moon's  face  looks  full  of  irony  to-night,"  said  the 
man  by  my  side,  "It  seems  to  say,  'What  fools  those 
creatures  are  down  there,  spoiling  their  harvest-time  with 
such  a  mess  of  blood!'" 

The  stars  were  very  bright  in  some  of  those  Flemish 
nights.  I  saw  the  Milky  Way  clearly  tracked  across  the 
dark  desert.  The  Pleiades  and  Orion's  belt  were  like 
diamonds  on  black  velvet.  But  among  all  these  worlds 
of  light  other  stars,  unknown  to  astronomers,  appeared 
and  disappeared.  On  the  road  back  from  a  French  town 
one  night  I  looked  Arras  way,  and  saw  what  seemed  a 
bursting  planet.  It  fell  with  a  scatter  of  burning  pieces. 
Then  suddenly  the  thick  cloth  of  the  night  was  rent  with 
stabs  of  light,  as  though  flashing  swords  were  hacking  it, 
and  a  moment  later  a  finger  of  white  fire  was  traced  along 
the  black  edge  of  the  far-off  woods,  so  that  the  whole  sky 
was  brightened  for  a  moment  and  then  was  blotted  out 
by  a  deeper  darkness.  .  .  .  Arras  was  being  shelled  again, 
as  I  saw  it  many  times  in  those  long  years  of  war. 

The  darkness  of  all  the  towns  in  the  war  zone  was 
rather  horrible.  Their  strange,  intense  quietude,  when 
the  guns  were  not  at  work,  made  them  dead,  as  the  very 
spirit  of  a  town  dies  on  the  edge  of  war.  One  night,  as 
on  many  others,  I  walked  through  one  of  them  with  a 
friend.  Every  house  was  shuttered,  and  hardly  a  gleam 
came  through  any  crack.  No  footstep,  save  our  own, 
told  of  life.  The  darkness  was  almost  palpable.  It 
seemed  to  press  against  one's  eyeballs  like  a  velvet  mask. 
My  nerves  were  so  on  edge  with  a  sense  of  the  uncanny 
silence  and  invisibility  that  I  started  violently  at  the  sound 
of  a  quiet  voice  speaking  three  inches  from  my  ear. 

"Halte!     Quivala?" 

It  was  a  French  sentry,  who  stood  with  his  back  to  the 
wall  of  a  house  in  such  a  gulf  of  blackness  that  not  even 
his  bayonet  was  revealed  by  a  glint. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       125 

Another  day  of  war  came.  The  old  beauty  of  the  world 
was  there,  close  to  the  lines  of  the  bronzed  cornfields 
splashed  with  the  scarlet  of  poppies,  and  the  pale  yellow 
of  the  newly  cut  sheaves,  stretching  away  and  away, 
without  the  break  of  a  hedge,  to  the  last  slopes  which  met 
the  sky. 

I  stood  in  some  of  those  harvest-fields,  staring  across 
to  a  slope  of  rising  ground  where  there  was  no  ripening 
wheat,  and  where  the  grass  itself  came  to  a  sudden  halt, 
as  though  afraid  of  something.  I  knew  the  reason  of 
this,  and  of  the  long  white  Hnes  of  earth  thrown  up  for 
miles  each  way.  Those  were  the  parapets  of  German 
trenches,  and  in  the  ditches  below  them  were  earth-men, 
armed  with  deadly  weapons,  staring  out  across  the  beauty 
of  France  and  wondering,  perhaps,  why  they  should  be 
there  to  mar  it,  and  watching  me,  a  little  black  dot  in 
their  range  of  vision,  with  an  idle  thought  as  to  whether 
it  were  worth  their  while  to  let  a  bullet  loose  and  end  my 
walk.  They  could  have  done  so  easily,  but  did  not 
bother.  No  shot  or  shell  came  to  break  through  the 
hum  of  bees  or  to  crash  through  the  sigh  of  the  wind, 
which  was  bending  all  the  ears  of  corn  to  listen  to  the 
murmurous  insect-life  in  these  fields  of  France. 

Close  to  me  was  a  group  of  peasants — a  study  for  a 
painter  like  Millet.  One  of  them  shouted  out  to  me, 
"Voila  les  Boches!"  waving  his  arm  to  left  and  right,  and 
then  shaking  a  clenched  fist  at  them. 

A  sturdy  girl  with  a  brown  throat  showing  through  an 
open  bodice  munched  an  apple,  hke  Audrey  in  "As  You 
Like  It,"  and  between  her  bites  told  me  that  she  had  had 
a  brother  killed  in  the  war,  and  that  she  had  been  nearly 
killed  herself,  a  week  ago,  by  shells  that  came  bursting 
all  round  her  as  she  was  tying  up  her  sheaves  (she  pointed 
to  great  holes  in  the  field),  and  described  the  coming  of 
the  Germans  into  her  village  over  there,  when  she  had  Hed 
to  some  Uhlans  about  the  whereabouts  of  French  soldiers 
^nd  had  given  one  of  those  fat  Germans  a  blow  on  the 


126  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

face  when  he  had  tried  to  make  love  to  her  in  her  father's 
barn.     Her  mother  had  been  raped. 

In  further  fields  out  of  view  of  the  German  trenches, 
but  well  within  shell-range,  the  harvesting  was  being  done 
by  French  soldiers.  One  of  them  was  driving  the  reaping- 
machine  and  looked  Hke  a  gunner  on  his  limber,  with  his 
kepi  thrust  to  the  back  of  his  head.  The  trousers  of  his 
comrades  were  as  red  as  the  poppies  that  grew  on  the 
edge  of  the  wheat,  and  three  of  these  poilus  had  ceased 
their  work  to  drink  out  of  a  leather  wine-bottle  which  had 
been  replenished  from  a  hand-cart.  It  was  a  pretty  scene 
if  one  could  forget  the  grim  purpose  which  had  put  those 
harvesters  in  uniform. 

The  same  thought  was  in  the  mind  of  a  British 
officer. 

"A  beautiful  country,  this,"  he  said.  *'It's  a  pity  to 
cut  it  up  with  trenches  and  barbed  wire." 

Battalions  of  New  Army  men  were  being  reviewed  but 
a  furlong  or  two  away  from  that  Invisible  Man  who  was 
wielding  a  scythe  which  had  no  mercy  for  unripe  wheat. 
Out  of  those  lines  of  eyes  stared  the  courage  of  men's 
souls,  not  shirking  the  next  ordeal. 

It  was  through  red  ears  of  corn,  in  that  summer  of  '15, 
that  one  found  one's  way  to  many  of  the  trenches  that 
marked  the  boundary-lines  of  the  year's  harvesting,  and 
in  Belgium  (by  Kemmel  Hill)  the  shells  of  our  batteries, 
answered  by  German  guns,  came  with  their  long-drawn 
howls  of  murder  across  the  heads  of  peasant  women  who 
were  gleaning,  with  bent  backs. 

In  Plug  Street  Wood  the  trees  had  worn  thin  under 
showers  of  shrapnel,  but  the  long  avenues  between  the 
trenches  were  cool  and  pleasant  in  the  heat  of  the  day. 
It  was  one  of  the  elementary  schools  where  many  of  our 
soldiers  learned  the  A  B  C  of  actual  warfare  after  their 
training  in  camps  behind  the  lines.  Here  one  might 
sport  with  Amaryllis  in  the  shade,  but  for  the  fact  that 
country  wenches  were  not  allowed  in  the  dugouts  and 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       127 

trenches,  where  I  found  our  soldiers  killing  flies  in  the 
intervals  between  pot-shots  at  German  periscopes. 

The  enemy  was  engaged,  presumably,  in  the  same  pur- 
suit of  killing  time  and  life  (with  luck),  and  sniping  was 
hot  on  both  sides,  so  that  the  wood  resounded  with  sharp 
reports  as  though  hard  filbert  nuts  were  being  cracked 
by  giant  teeth.  Each  time  I  went  there  one  of  our  men 
was  hit  by  a  sniper,  and  his  body  was  carried  off  for 
burial  as  I  went  toward  the  first  line  of  trenches,  hoping 
that  my  shadow  would  not  fall  across  a  German  periscope. 
The  sight  of  that  dead  body  passing  chilled  one  a  little. 
There  were  many  graves  in  the  bosky  arbors — eighteen 
under  one  mound — but  some  of  those  who  had  fallen  six 
months  before  still  lay  where  the  gleaners  could  not 
reach  them. 

I  used  to  peer  through  the  leaves  of  Plug  Street  Wood 
at  No  Man's  Land  between  the  lines,  where  every  creature 
had  been  killed  by  the  sweeping  flail  of  machine-guns  and 
shrapnel.  Along  the  harvest-fields  there  were  many  bar- 
ren territories  like  that,  and  up  by  Hooge,  along  the  edge 
of  the  fatal  crater,  and  behind  the  stripped  trees  of 
Zouave  Wood  there  was  no  other  gleaning  to  be  had  but 
that  of  broken  shells  and  shrapnel  bullets  and  a  litter  of 
limbs. 

XV 

For  some  time  the  War  Office  would  not  allow  military 
bands  at  the  front,  not  understanding  that  music  was  like 
water  to  parched  souls.  By  degrees  divisional  generals 
realized  the  utter  need  of  entertainment  among  men 
dulled  and  dazed  by  the  routine  of  war,  and  encouraged 
"variety"  shows,  organized  by  young  officers  who  had 
been  amateur  actors  before  the  war,  who  searched  around 
for  likely  talent.  There  was  plenty  of  it  in  the  New 
Army,  including  professional  "funny  men,"  trick  cyclists, 
conjurers,  and  singers  of  all  kinds.  So  by  the  summer  of 
'15  most  of  the  divisions  had  their  dramatic  entertain- 
ments:  "The  Follies,"  "The  Bow  Bells,"  "The  Jocks," 


128  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"The  Pip-Squeaks,"  "The  Whizz-Bangs,"  "The  Dia- 
monds," "The  Brass  Hats,"  "The  Verey  Lights,"  and 
many  others  with  fancy  names. 

I  remember  going  to  one  of  the  first  of  them  in  the  vil- 
lage of  Acheux,  a  few  miles  from  the  German  lines.  It 
was  held  in  an  old  sugar-factory,  and  I  shall  long  re- 
member the  impressions  of  the  place,  with  seven  or 
eight  hundred  men  sitting  in  the  gloom  of  that  big, 
broken,  barnlike  building,  where  strange  bits  of  ma- 
chinery looked  through  the  darkness,  and  where  through 
gashes  in  the  walls  stars  twinkled. 

There  was  a  smell  of  clay  and  moist  sugar  and  tarpau- 
lins and  damp  khaki,  and  chloride  of  lime,  very  pungent 
in  one's  nostrils,  and  when  the  curtain  went  up  on  a  well- 
fitted  stage  and  "The  Follies"  began  their  performance, 
the  squalor  of  the  place  did  not  matter.  What  mattered 
was  the  enormous  whimsicality  of  the  Bombardier  at  the 
piano,  and  the  outrageous  comicality  of  a  tousle-haired 
soldier  with  a  red  nose,  who  described  how  he  had  run 
away  from  Mons  "with  the  rest  of  you,"  and  the  Hght- 
heartedness  of  a  performance  which  could  have  gone 
straight  to  a  London  music-hall  and  brought  down  the 
house  with  jokes  and  songs  made  up  in  dugouts  and  front- 
line trenches. 

At  first  the  audience  sat  silent,  with  glazed  eyes.  It 
was  difficult  to  get  a  laugh  out  of  them.  The  mud  of  the 
trenches  was  still  on  them.  They  stank  of  the  trenches, 
and  the  stench  was  in  their  souls.  Presently  they  began 
to  brighten  up.  Life  came  back  into  their  eyes.  They 
laughed!  .  .  .  Later,  from  this  audience  of  soldiers  there 
were  yells  of  laughter,  though  the  effect  of  shells  arriving 
at  unexpected  moments,  in  untoward  circumstances,  was 
a  favorite  theme  of  the  jesters.  Many  of  the  men  were 
going  into  the  trenches  that  night  again,  and  there  would 
be  no  fun  in  the  noise  of  the  shells,  but  they  went  more 
gaily  and  with  stronger  hearts,  I  am  sure,  because  of  the 
laughter  which  had  roared  through  the  old  sugar- 
factory. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       129 

A  night  or  two  later  I  went  to  another  concert  and  heard 
the  same  gaiety  of  men  who  had  been  through  a  year  of 
war.  It  was  in  an  open  field,  under  a  velvety  sky  studded 
with  innumerable  stars.  Nearly  a  thousand  soldiers 
trooped  through  the  gates  and  massed  before  the  little 
canvas  theater.  In  front  a  small  crowd  of  Flemish  chil- 
dren squatted  on  the  grass,  not  understanding  a  word  of 
the  jokes,  but  laughing  in  shrill  delight  at  the  antics  of 
soldier-Pierrots.  The  corner-man  was  a  funny  fellow, 
and  his  by-play  with  a  stout  Flemish  woman  round  the 
flap  of  the  canvas  screen,  to  whom  he  made  amorous 
advances  while  his  comrades  were  singing  sentimental 
ballads,  was  truly  comic.  The  hit  of  the  evening  was 
when  an  Australian  behind  the  stage  gave  an  unexpected 
imitation  of  a  laughing-jackass. 

There  was  something  indescribably  weird  and  wild  and 
grotesque  in  that  prolonged  cry  of  cackling,  unnatural 
mirth.  An  Australian  by  my  side  said:  "Well  done! 
Exactly  right!"  and  the  Flemish  children  shrieked  with 
joy,  without  understanding  the  meaning  of  the  noise. 
Old,  old  songs  belonging  to  the  early  Victorian  age  were 
given  by  the  soldiers,  who  had  great  emotion  and  broke 
down  sometimes  in  the  middle  of  a  verse.  There  were 
funny  men  dressed  in  the  Widow  Twankey  style,  or  in 
burlesque  uniforms,  who  were  greeted  with  yells  of  laugh- 
ter by  their  comrades.  An  Australian  giant  played  some 
clever  card  tricks,  and  another  Australian  recited  Kip- 
Hng's  "Gunga  Din"  with  splendid  fire.  And  between 
every  "turn"  the  soldiers  in  the  field  roared  out  a  chorus: 

"Jolly  good  song, 
Jolly  well  sung. 

If  you  can  think  of  a  better  you're  welcome  to  try. 
But  don't  forget  the  singer  Is  dry; 
Give  the  poor  beggar  some  beer!" 

A  touring  company  of  mouth-organ  musicians  was  hav- 
ing a  great  success  in  the  war  zone.  But,  apart  from  all 
those  organized  nietbods  of  mirth,  there  was  a  funny  man 


I30  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

m  every  billet  who  played  the  part  of  court  jester,  and 
clowned  it  whatever  the  state  of  the  weather  or  the  risks 
of  war.  The  British  soldier  would  have  his  game  of 
"house"  or  "crown  and  anchor"  even  on  the  edge  of  the 
shell-storm,  and  his  little  bit  of  sport  wherever  there  was 
room  to  stretch  his  legs.  It  was  a  jesting  army  (though 
some  of  its  jokes  were  very  grim),  and  those  who  saw,  as 
I  did,  the  daily  tragedy  of  war,  never  ceasing,  always 
adding  to  the  sum  of  human  suffering,  were  not  likely  to 
discourage  that  sense  of  humor. 

A  successful  concert  with  mouth-organs,  combs,  and 
tissue-paper  and  penny  whistles  was  given  by  the 
Guards  in  the  front-line  trenches  near  Loos.  They  played 
old  English  melodies,  harmonized  with  great  emotion  and 
technical  skill.  It  attracted  an  unexpected  audience. 
The  Germans  crowded  into  their  front  line — not  far  away 
— and  applauded  each  number.  Presently,  in  good  Eng- 
lish, a  German  voice  shouted  across: 

"Play  'Annie  Laurie'  and  I  will  sing  it.'* 

The  Guards  played  "Annie  Laurie,"  and  a  German 
officer  stood  up  on  the  parapet — the  evening  sun  was  red 
behind  him — and  sang  the  old  song  admirably,  with  great 
tenderness.     There  was  applause  on  both  sides. 

"Let's  have  another  concert  to-morrow!"  shouted  the 
Germans. 

But  there  was  a  different  kind  of  concert  next  day,  and 
the  music  was  played  by  trench-mortars,  Mills  bombs, 
rifle-grenades,  and  other  instruments  of  death  in  posses- 
sion of  the  Guards.  There  were  cries  of  agony  and  terror 
from  the  German  trenches,  and  young  officers  of  the 
Guards  told  the  story  as  an  amusing  anecdote,  with  loud 
laughter. 

XVI 

It  was  astonishing  how  loudly  one  laughed  at  tales  of 
gruesome  things,  of  war's  brutality — I  with  the  rest  of 
them.     I  think  at  the  bottom  of  it  was  a  sense  of  the 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE 


i3\ 


ironical  contrast  between  the  normal  ways  of  civilian_life\     ^ 
nnd  thisjiark-back  to  the  caA^^eman  code.     It  made  all 
onrold    philosophy   of  life   monstrously    ridiculous.     It 
played  the  "hat  trick"  with  the  gentility  of  modern  man- 
ners.    Men  who  had  been  brought  up  to  Christian  vir- 
tues, who  had~prattTed~theiF"TittIe^  prayers  at  motjiers'     ^ 
knees^^jyho^  had  grown  up  to  a  love  of^poetry,  painting,     t—^ 
music,  the  gentl^^Hs7over-seTisJtizeH~tojthe  subtleties  of 
half-tones,  delicate  scales  of  emotion,  Tastidious  in  their 
choice  of  words,  in  their  sense  of  beauty,  found  them- 


seI^s~"coiTip^feiTTr11ve~alTdTcFTrke^^  and  it  was 

abommably  funny:  They_laugHed~at'^he^  most  l^gfTtful 
episodesT^which  reveale5^lIhis~contrast  between  civTHzied 
ethics  anihThe  old^beast  Ta\V^i  Theliibre  revolting  it  was 


the  rnorer^omCTiiTTes^  they  shouted  with  laughter,  espe- 
cially in  reminiscence,  when  the  tale  was  told  in  the  gilded 
salo?i  of  a  French  chateau,  or  at  a  mess-table. 

It  was,  I  think,  the  laughter^of  mortals  at  the  trick 
which  haTBeen^played  onlhen/by  an  ironical  tate.^  TKey  , 
had^een  taught  to  believe  that  the  whole  object  of  life  . 
was  to  reach  out  to  beauty  and  love,  and  that  mankind,  I 
in  its  progress  to  perfection,  had  killed  the  beast  instinct,  j 
cruelty,  blood-lust,  the  primitive,  savage  law  of  survival^ 
by  tooth  and  claw  and  club  and  ax.  All  poetry,  all  art, 
all  religion  had  preached  this  gospel  and  this  promise. 

Now  that  ideal  had  broken  like  a  china  vase  dashed  to 
hard  ground.  The  contrast  between  That  and  This  was 
devastating.  It  was,  in  an  enorrnous  world-shaking  way  % 
like_a  hjghly  dignified  man  in  a  silk  hat.  morningL-Coat, 
creased  trousgiSx  spats,  and  patent  bootssuddenly__slip- 
ping  on  a  piece  oforange-peel  and  'sitting,  all  jTa  he^p, 

The  war-time 


with_sil^2!l^  ^Yli3^^  ^"  ^  hltlryguttcE  ^..^  „^.^^.^.^y 
humor  of  tRe^soiiTroared  withmirth  at  the  sight  of  ^^ 
that  dignity  and  elegance  despoiled. 

So  we  laughed  merrily,  I  remember,  when  a  military 
chaplain  (Eton,  Christ  Church,  Vand  Christian  service) 
described  how  an  English  sergeant  stood  round  the  trav- 
erse of  a  German  trench,  in  a  night  raid,  and  as  the  Ger- 


132  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

mans  came  his  way,  thinking  to  escape,  he  cleft  one  skull 
after  another  with  a  steel-studded  bludgeon — a  weapon 
which  he  had  made  with  loving  craftsmanship  on  the 
model  of  Blunderbore's  club  in  the  pictures  of  a 
fairy-tale. 

J  So  we  laughed  at  the  adventures  of  a  young  barrister 
(a  brilliant  fellow  in  the  Oxford  "Union")  whose  pleasure 
it  was  to  creep  out  o'  nights  into  No  Man's  Land  and  lie 
doggo  in  a  shell-hole  close  to  the  enemy's  barbed  wire, 
until  presently,  after  an  hour's  waiting  or  two,  a  German 
soldier  would  crawl  out  to  fetch  in  a  corpse.  The  English 
barrister  lay  with  his  rifle  ready.  Where  there  had  been 
one  corpse  there  were  two.  Each  night  he  made  a  notch 
on  his  rifle — three  notches  one  night — to  check  the  num- 
ber of  his  victims.  Then  he  came  back  to  breakfast  in 
his  dugout  with  a  hearty  appetite. 

In  one  section  of  trenches  the  men  made  a  habit  of 
betting  upon  those  who  would  be  wounded  first.  It  had 
all  the  uncertainty  of  the  roulette-table.  .  .  .  One  day, 
when  the  German  gunners  were  putting  over  a  special 
dose  of  hate,  a  sergeant  kept  coming  to  one  dugout  to 
inquire  about  a  "new  chum"  who  had  come  up  with  the 
drafts. 

"Is  Private  Smith  all  right?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,  Sergeant,  he's  all  right,"  answered  the  men 
crouching  in  the  dark  hole. 

"Private  Smith  isn't  wounded  yet?"  asked  the  ser- 
geant again,  five  minutes  later. 

"No,  Sergeant." 
'     Private  Smith  was  touched  by  this  interest  in  his  well- 
being. 

"That  sergeant  seems  a  very  kind  man,"  said  the  boy. 
*' Seems  to  love  me  like  a  father!" 

A  yell  of  laughter  answered  him. 

"You  poor,  bleeding  fool!"  said  one  of  his  comrades, 
"lie's  drawn  you  in  a  lottery!  Stood  to  win  if  you'd 
been  hit." 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       133 

In  digging  new  trenches  and  new  dugouts,  bodies  and 
bits  of  bodies  were  unearthed,  and  put  into  sand-bags 
with  the  soil  that  was  sent  back  down  a  hne  of  men  con- 
ceahng  their  work  from  German  eyes  waiting  for  any  new 
activity  in  our  ditches. 

"Bit  of  Bill,"  said  the  leading  man,  putting  in  a  leg. 

"Another  bit  of  Bill,"  he  said,  unearthing  a  hand. 

"Bill's  ugly  mug,"  he  said  at  a  later  stage  in  the  opera- 
tions, when  a  head  was  found. 

As  told  afterward,  that  little  episode  in  the  trenchesl 
seemed  immensely  comic.  Generals  chuckled  over  it./ 
Chaplains  treasured  it.  ^ 

How  we  used  to  guffaw  at  the  answer  of  the  cockney 
soldier  who  met  a  German  soldier  with  his  hands  up,  cry- 
ing: "  Kamerad!     Kamerad!     Mercy!" 

"Not  so  much  of  your  *  Mercy,  Kamerad,'"  said  the 
cockney.     "'And  us  over  your  bloody  ticker!" 

It  was  the  man's  watch  he  wanted,  vmhoiit^sentim^ 

One  tale  was  most  popular,  most  mirth-arousing  in  the 
early  days  of  the  war. 

"Where's  your  prisoner?"  asked  an  Intelligence  officer 
waiting  to  receive  a  German  sent  down  from  the  trenches 
under  escort  of  an  honest  corporal. 

"I  lost  him  on  the  way,  sir,"  said  the  corporal. 

"Lost  him?" 

The  corporal  was  embarrassed. 

"Very  sorry,  sir.  My  feelings  overcame  me,  sir.    It  was 
like  this,  sir.     The  man  started  talking  on  the  way  down. 
Said  he  was  thinking  of  his  poor  wife.     I'd  been  thinking/ 
of  mine,  and  I  felt  sorry  for  him.     Then  he  mentioned! 
as  how  he  had  two  kiddies  at  home.     I  'ave  two  kiddies  j 
at  'ome,  sir,  and  I  couldn't  'elp  feeling  sorry  for  him.j 
Then  he  said  as  how  his  old  mother  had  died  awhile  ago; 
and  he'd  never  see  her  again.     When  he  started   cryin' 
I  was  so  sorry  for  him  I  couldn't  stand  it  any  longer,  sir.i 
So  I  killed  the  poor  blighter." 
10 


134  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Our  men  In  the  trenches,  and  out  of  them,  up  to  the 
waist  in  water  sometimes,  lying  in  sUmy  dugouts,  lice- 
eaten,  rat-haunted,  on  the  edge  of  mine-craters,  under 
harassing  fire,  with  just  the  fluke  of  luck  between  life  and 
death,  seized  upon  any  kind  of  joke  as  an  excuse  for 
laughter,  and  many  a  time  in  ruins  and  in  trenches  and 
in  dugouts  I  have  heard  great  laughter.  It  was  the  pro- 
tective armor  of  men's  souls.  They  knew  that  if  they 
did  not  laugh  their  courage  would  go  and  nothing  would 
stand  betweenthem"ahd  fear. 

"You  know,  sir,  said  a  sergeant-major,  one  day,  when 
I  walked  with  him  down  a  communication  trench  so 
waterlogged  that  my  top-boots  were  full  of  slime.  Hit, 
doesn't  do  totakejthis  war  seriously." 

And,  as' though  in  answer  to  him,  a  soldier  without 
breeches  and  with  his  shirt  tied  between  his  legs  looked 
at  me  and  remarked,  in  a  philosophical  way,  with  just  a 
glint  of  comedy  in  his  eyes: 

"That  there  Grand  Fleet  of  ours  don't  seem  to  be  very 
active,  sir.  It's  a  pity  it  don't  come  down  these  bhnkin' 
trenches  and  do  a  bit  of  work!" 

"Having  a  clean-up,  my  man?"  said  a  brigadier  to  a 
soldier  trying  to  wash  in  a  basin  about  the  size  of  a  kitchen 
mug. 
I      "Yes,  sir,"  said  the  man,  "and  I  wish  I  was  a  blasted 
canary." 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  battles  on  the  front  was 
fought  by  a  battalion  of  Worcesters  for  the  benefit  of  two 
English  members  of  Parliament.  It  was  not  a  very  big 
battle,  but  most  dramatic  while  it  lasted.  The  colonel 
(who  had  a  sense  of  humor)  arranged  it  after  a  telephone 
message  to  his  dugout  telling  him  that  two  politicians 
were  about  to  visit  his  battalion  in  the  line,  and  asking 
him  to  show  them  something  interesting. 

"Interesting?"  said  the  colonel.  "Do  they  think  this 
war  is  a  peep-show  for  politicians?     Do  they  want  me  to 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       135 

arrange  a  massacre  to  make  a  London  holiday?"  Then 
his  voice  changed  and  he  laughed.  "Show  them  some- 
thing interesting?  Oh,  all  right;  I  dare  say  I  can  do 
that." 

He  did.  When  the  two  M.  P.'s  arrived,  apparently  at 
the  front-line  trenches,  they  were  informed  by  the  colonel 
that,  much  to  his  regret,  for  their  sake,  the  enemy  was 
just  attacking,  and  that  his  men  were  defending  their 
position  desperately. 

"We  hope  for  the  best,"  he  said,  *'and  I  think  there  is 
just  a  chance  that  you  will  escape  with  your  hves  if  you 
stay  here  quite  quietly." 

"Great  God!"  said  one  of  the  M.  P.'s,  and  the  other 
was  silent,  but  pale. 

Certainly  there  was  all  the  noise  of  a  big  attack.  The 
Worcesters  were  standing-to  on  the  fire-step,  firing  rifle- 
grenades  and  throwing  bombs  Vvith  terrific  energy.  Every 
now  and  then  a  man  fell,  and  the  stretcher-bearers  pounced 
on  him,  tied  him  up  in  bandages,  and  carried  him  away 
to  the  field  dressing-station,  whistling  as  they  went,  "We 
won't  go  home  till  morning,"  in  a  most  heroic  way.  .  .  . 
The  battle  lasted  twenty  minutes,  at  the  end  of  which 
time  the  colonel  announced  to  his  visitors: 

"The  attack  is  repulsed,  and  you,  gentlemen,  have 
nothing  more  to  fear." 

One  of  the  M.  P.'s  was  thrilled  with  excitement.  "The 
valor  of  your  men  was  marvelous,"  he  said.  "What  im- 
pressed me  most  was  the  cheerfulness  of  the  wounded. 
They  were  actually  grinning  as  they  came  down  on  the 
stretchers." 

The  colonel  grinned,  too.  In  fact,  he  stifled  a  fit  of 
coughing.  "Funny  devils!"  he  said.  "They  are  so  glad 
to  be  going  home." 

The  members  of  Parliament  went  away  enormously 
impressed,  but  they  had  not  enjoyed  themselves  nearly 
as  well  as  the  Worcesters,  who  had  fought  a  sham  battle 
— not  in  the  front-line  trenches,  but  in  the  support  trenches 
two  miles  back!     They  laughed  for  a  week  afterward. 


136  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

XVII 

On  the  hill  at  Wizerne,  not  far  from  the  stately  old  town 
of  St.-Omer  (visited  from  time  to  time  by  monstrous 
nightbirds  who  dropped  high-explosive  eggs),  was  a  large 
convent.  There  were  no  nuns  there,  but  generally  some 
hundreds  of  young  officers  and  men  from  many  different 
battalions,  attending  a  machine-gun  course  under  the 
direction  of  General  Baker-Carr,  who  was  the  master 
machine-gunner  of  the  British  army  (at  a  time  when  we 
were  very  weak  in  those  weapons  compared  with  the 
enemy's  strength)  and  a  cheery,  vital  man. 

"This  war  has  produced  two  great  dugouts,"  said  Lord 
Kitchener  on  a  visit  to  the  convent.  *'  Me  and  Baker-Carr." 

It  was  the  boys  who  interested  me  more  than  the 
machines.  (I  was  never  much  interested  in  the  machinery 
of  war.)  They  came  down  from  the  trenches  to  this 
school  with  a  sense  of  escape  from  prison,  and  for  the  ten 
days  of  their  course  they  were  like  "freshers"  at  Oxford 
and  made  the  most  of  their  minutes,  organizing  concerts 
and  other  entertainments  in  the  evenings  after  their  in- 
itiation into  the  mysteries  of  Vickers  and  Lewis.  I  was 
invited  to  dinner  there  one  night,  and  sat  between  two 
young  cavalry  officers  on  long  benches  crowded  with  sub- 
alterns of  many  regiments.  It  was  a  merry  meal  and  a 
good  one — to  this  day  I  remember  a  potato  pie,  gloriously 
baked,  and  afterward,  as  it  was  the  last  night  of  the  course, 
all  the  officers  went  wild  and  indulged  in  a  "rag"  of  the 
public-school  kind.  They  straddled  across  the  benches 
and  barged  at  each  other  in  single  tourneys  and  jousts, 
riding  their  hobby-horses  with  violent  rearings  and 
plungings  and  bruising  one  another  without  grievous  hurt 
and  with  yells  of  laughter.  Glasses  broke,  crockery 
crashed  upon  the  polished  boards.  One  boy  danced  the 
Highland  fling  on  the  tables,  others  were  waltzing  down 
the  corridors.  There  was  a  Rugby  scrum  in  the  refectory, 
and  hunting-men  cried  the  "View  halloo!"  and  shouted 
"Yoicks!  yoicks!"  .  .  .  General  Baker-Carr  was  a  human 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       137 

soul,  and  kept  to  his  own  room  that  night  and  let  disci- 
pline go  hang.  .  .  . 

When  the  battles  of  the  Somme  began  it  was  those 
young  officers  who  led  their  machine-gun  sections  into 
the  woods  of  death — Belville  Wood,  Mametz  Wood,  High 
Wood,  and  the  others.  It  was  they  who  afterward  held 
the  outpost  lines  in  Flanders.  Some  of  them  were  still 
alive  on  March  21,  1918,  when  they  were  surrounded  by 
a  sea  of  Germans  and  fought  until  the  last,  in  isolated 
redoubts  north  and  south  of  St.-Quentin.  Two  of  them 
are  still  alive,  those  between  whom  I  sat  at  dinner  that 
night,  and  who  escaped  many  close  calls  of  death  before 
the  armistice.  Of  the  others  who  charged  one  another 
with  wooden  benches,  their  laughter  ringing  out,  some 
were  blown  to  bits,  and  some  were  buried  alive,  and  some 
were  blinded  and  gassed,  and  some  went  "missing"  for 
evermore. 

XVIII 

In  those  long  days  of  trench  warfare  and  stationary 
lines  it  was  boredom  that  was  the  worst  mala^  of  the 
mind;  a  large,  overwhelmmg  boredom  to  thousands  of 
men  who  were  in  exile  from  the  normal  interests  of  life 
and  from  the  activities  of  brain-work;  an  intolerable, 
abominable  boredom,  sapping  the  will-power,  the  moral 
code,  the  intellect;  a  boredom  from  which  there  seemed 
no  escape  except  by  death,  no  relief  except  by  vice,  no 
probable  or  possible  change  in  its  dreary  routine.  It  was 
bad  enough  in  the  trenches,  where  men  looked  across  the 
parapet  to  the  same  corner  of  hell  day  by  day,  to  the  same 
dead  bodies  rotting  by  the  edge  of  the  same  mine-crater, 
to  the  same  old  sand-bags  in  the  enemy's  line,  to  the 
blasted  tree  sliced  by  shell-fire,  the  upturned  railway- 
truck  of  which  only  the  metal  remained,  the  distant 
fringe  of  trees  like  gallows  on  the  sky-line,  the  broken 
spire  of  a  church  which  could  be  seen  in  the  round  O  of 
the  telescope  when  the  weather  was  not  too  misty.  In 
** quiet"  sections  of  the  line  the  only  variation  to  the 


138  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

routine  was  the  number  of  casualties  day  by  day,  by 
casual  shell-fire  or  snipers'  bullets,  and  that  became  part 
of  the  boredom.  "What  casualties?"  asked  the  adjutant 
in  his  dugout. 

"Two  killed,  three  wounded,  sir." 

"Very  well.  .  .  .  You  can  go." 

A  salute  in  the  doorway  of  the  dugout,  a  groan  from  the 
adjutant  lighting  another  cigarette,  leaning  with  his  elbow 
on  the  deal  table,  staring  at  the  guttering  of  the  candle 
by  his  side,  at  the  pile  of  forms  in  front  of  him,  at  the 
glint  of  light  on  the  steel  helmet  hanging  by  its  strap  on 
a  nail  near  the  shelf  where  he  kept  his  safety-razor,  flash- 
lamp,  love-letters  (in  an  old  cigar-box),  soap,  whisky- 
bottle  (almost  empty  now),  and  an  unread  novel. 

"Hell!.  .  .What  a  life!" 

But  there  was  always  work  to  do,  and  odd  incidents, 
and  frights,  and  responsibilities. 

It  was  worse — this  boredom — for  men  behind  the  lines; 
in  lorry  columns  which  went  from  rail-head  to  dump  every 
damned  morning,  and  back  again  by  the  middle  of  the 
morning,  and  then  nothing  else  to  do  for  all  the  day,  in 
a  cramped  little  billet  with  a  sulky  woman  in  the  kitchen, 
and  squealing  children  in  the  yard,  and  a  stench  of  manure 
through  the  small  window.  A  dull  Hfe  for  an  actor  who 
had  toured  in  England  and  America  (like  one  I  met  dazed 
and  stupefied  by  years  of  boredom — paying  too  much  for 
safety),  or  for  a  barrister  who  had  many  briefs  before  the 
war  and  now  found  his  memory  going,  though  a  young 
man,  because  of  the  narrow  limits  of  his  life  between  one 
Flemish  village  and  another,  which  Vv'as  the  length  of  his 
lorry  column  and  of  his  adventure  of  war.  Nothing  ever 
happened  to  break  the  monotony — not  even  shell-fire. 
So  it  was  also  in  small  towns  like  Hesdin,  St. -Pol,  Bruay, 
Lillers — a  hundred  others  where  officers  stayed  for  years 
in  charge  of  motor-repair  shops,  ordnance-stores,  labor 
battalions,  administration  offices,  claim  commissions, 
graves'  registration,  agriculture  for  soldiers,  all  kinds  of 
jobs  connected  with  that  life  of  war,  but  not  exciting. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       139 

Not  exciting.  So  frightful  in  boredom  that  men  were 
tempted  to  take  to  drink,  to  look  around  for  unattached 
women,  to  gamble  at  cards  with  any  poor  devil  like  them- 
selves. Those  were  most  bored  who  were  most  virtuous. 
For  them,  with  an  ideal  in  their  souls,  there  was  no  pos- 
sibility of  relief  (for  virtue  is  not  its  own  reward),  unless 
they  were  mystics,  as  some  became,  who  found  God  good} 
company  and  needed  no  other  help.  They  had  mrp  Inrl-,! 
those  fellows  with  4p  astounding  faith  which  rose  above! 
thej^rony  and  the  bruta^lity  ot  that  business^being  done  in' 
thetrenches,  but  there  v/ere  fewof  them. 

Even  with  hours  of  leisure,  meiTwEo  had  been  "book- 
ish" could  not  read.  That  was  a  common  phenomenon.  I 
could  read  hardly  at  all,  for  years,  and  thousands  were 
like  me.  The  most  "exciting"  novel  was  dull  stuff  up 
against  that  world  convulsion.  What  did  the  romance 
of  love  mean,  the  little  tortures  of  one  man's  heart,  or 
one  woman's,  troubled  in  their  mating,  when  thousands 
of  men  were  being  killed  and  vast  populations  were  in 
agony?  History — Greek  or  Roman  or  medieval — what 
was  the  use  of  reading  that  old  stuff,  now  that  world  his- 
tory was  being  made  with  a  rush.^'  Poetry — poor  poets 
with  their  love  of  beauty!  What  did  beauty  matter,  now 
that  it  lay  dead  in  the  soul  of  the  world,  under  the  filth 
of  battlefields,  and  the  dirt  of  hate  and  cruelty,  and  the 
law  of  the  apelike  man?  No — we  could  not  read;  but 
talked  and  talked  about  the  old  philosophy  of  life,  and 
the  structure  of  society,  and  Democracy  and  Liberty 
and  Patriotism  and  Internationalism,  and  Brotherhood 
of  Men,  and  God,  and  Christian  ethics;  and  then  talked 
no  more,  because  all  words  were  futile,  and  just  brooded 
and  brooded,  after  searching  the  daily  paper  (two  days 
old)  for  any  kind  of  hope  and  light,  not  finding  either. 


XIX 

At  first,  in  the  beginning  of  the  war,  our  officers  and 
men  believed  that  it  would  have  a  quick  ending.     Our 


I40  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

first  Expeditionary  Force  came  out  to  France  with  the 
cheerful  shout  of  "Now  we  sha'n't  he  long!"  before  they 
fell  back  from  an  advancing  tide  of  Germans  from  Mons 
to  the  Marne,  and  fell  in  their  youth  like  autumn  leaves. 
The  New  Army  boys  who  followed  them  were  desperate 
to  get  out  to  *'the  great  adventure."  They  cursed  the 
length  of  their  training  in  English  camps.  "We  sha'n't 
get  out  till  it's  too  late!"  they  said.  Too  late,  O  God! 
Even  when  they  had  had  their  first  spell  in  the  trenches 
and  came  up  against  German  strength  they  kept  a  queer 
faith,  for  a  time,  that  "something"  would  happen  to  bring 
peace  as  quickly  as  war  had  come.  Peace  was  always 
coming  three  months  ahead.  Generals  and  staflP-oflScers, 
as  well  as  sergeants  and  privates,  had  that  strong  opti- 
mism, not  based  on  any  kind  of  reason;  but  gradually  it 
died  out,  and  in  its  place  came  the  awful  conviction  which 
settled  upon  the  hearts  of  the  fighting-men,  that  this  war 
would  go  on  forever,  that  it  was  their  doom  always  to 
live  in  ditches  and  dugouts,  and  that  their  only  way  of 
escape  was  by  a  "Blighty"  wound  or  by  death. 

A  chaplain  I  knew  used  to  try  to  cheer  up  despondent 
boys  by  pretending  to  have  special  knowledge  of  inside 
politics. 

"I  have  it  on  good  authority,"  he  said,  "that  peace  is 
near  at  hand.     There  have  been  negotiations  in  Paris — " 

Or: 

"I  don't  mind  telling  you  lads  that  if  you  get  through 
the  next  scrap  you  will  have  peace  before  you  know  where 
you  are." 

They  were  not  believing,  now.  He  had  played  that 
game  too  often. 

"Old  stuff,  padre!"  they  said. 

That  particular  crowd  did  not  get  through  the  next 
scrap.  But  the  padre's  authority  was  good.  They  had 
peace  long  before  the  armistice. 

It  was  worst  of  all  for  boys  of  sensitive  minds  who 
were  lucky  enough  to  get  a  "cushie"  wound,  and  so  went 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       141 

on  and  on,  or  who  were  patched  up  again  quickly  after 
one,  two,  or  three  wounds,  and  came  back  again.  It  was 
a  boy  Hke  that  who  revealed  his  bitterness  to  me  one  day 
as  we  stood  together  in  the  sahent. 

"It's  the  length  of  the  war,"  he  said,  "which  does  one 
down.  At  first  it  seemed  like  a  big  adventure,  and  the 
excitement  of  it,  horrible  though  it  was,  kept  one  going. 
Ev_en  the  first  time  I  went  over  the  top  wasn't  so  bad  as 

I  thought  it  would  b£. T  was  dazed  and  drunk  with  all 

sorts  of  emotions,  inrliiding  fenr^  that  were  worse  before 
going  over.  I  had  what  we  call  'the  needle.'  They  all 
have  it.  Afterward  one  didn't  know  what  one  was-doing 
— even  the  killing  part  of  the  business — until  one  reached 
the  objective  and  lay  down  and  had  tmte  to  think  and 
tocount  the  dead  about.  .  .  .  Now  the  excitement  lias 
gone  out  of  it,  and  tlie  war  looks  as  though  it  would  go 
on  forever.  At  first  we  all  searched  the  papers  for  some 
hope  that  the  end  was  near.  We  don't  do  that  now. 
We  know  that  whenever  the  war  ends,  this  year  or  next, 
this  little  crowd  will  be  mostly  wnped  out.  Bound  to  be. 
And  why  are  we  going  to  die?  That's  what  all  of  us) 
want  to  know.  What's  it  all  about?  Oh  yes,  I  know/ 
the  usual  answers:  'In  defense  of  liberty,'  'To  save  the 
Empire.'  But  we've  all  lost  our  liberty.  We're  slaves 
under  shell-fire.  And  as  for  the  Empire — I  don't  give  a 
curse  for  it.  I'm  thinking  only  of  my  little  home  at 
Streatham  Hill.  The  horrible  Hun?  I've  no  quarrel] 
with  the  poor  blighters  over  there  by  Hooge.  They  are! 
in  the  same  bloody  mess  as  we  are.  They  hate  it  just  as/ 
much.  We're  all  under  a  spell  together,  which  some  devilg  |  |A 
have  put  on  us.     1  wonder  if  there's  a  God  anywhere." 

This  sense  of  being  under  a  black  spell  T  fonnrl  py- 
pressed  by  other  men,  and  by  German  prisoners  who  used 
the  same  phrase.  I  remember  one  of  them  m  the  battles 
of  the  Somme,  who  said,  in  good  English:  "This  war  was 
not  made  in  any  sense  by  mankind.  We 'are  under  a 
speTIT*     This  belief  waslJueT^ thmk, ,  to~tFdnip£rs-Qnal 


142 


NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 


character  ofjl!i2JpJIL_w^fargj  in  which  gun-fire  is  at  so 
longVrange  that  shcU-fire  has  the  quality  of  natural  and 
elemental  powejs_o£_death — like  thunderbolts — and  ijien 
knTed~twentv  miles  behind  the  Hnes  while  walking  ove r 

sunny  fields  or  in  busy  villages TiaJnoThoHSl^I^S^^'^ 
enem3r3esiringtTVetrih^drvi^jjal_death . 
"TjocTandTJhristianity  raised  perplexities  in  the  minds 
of  simple  lads  desiring  life  and  not  death.  Thej_could 
not  reconcile  the  Christian  precepts  of  the  chaplain  with 
t he~~ba^onetiiTg~of~Germans    and   the    shanibles_of  jji e 

^sh  in  the 


battlehelds^  AH 
fields  of  France  and  Flanders_seemcd  to  thern^r-to  many  of 
them,  I  know — a  certain  proof  that  God__dld  not  exist, 
or  IFHe^did  exist  was  niot,_as  r'''^}^  wrip  told,  a  God  of 
Love,  but  a  m_onster  glad  of  the  agonies  of  men.  That 
at  least  was  the  thought  expressed  to  me  by  some  London 
lads  who  argued  the  matter  with  me  one  day,  and  that 
was  the  thought  which  our  army  chaplains  had  to  meet 
from  men  who  would  not  be  put  off  by  conventional 
words.  It  was  not  good  enough  to  tell  them  that  the 
Germans  were  guilty  of  all  this  crime  and  that  unless  the 
Germans  were  beaten  the  world  would  lose  its  liberty 
and  life.  **Yes,  we  know  all  that,"  they  said,  **but  why 
did  God  allow  the  Germans,  or  the  statesmen  who  ar- 
ranged the  world  by  force,  or  the  clergy  who  christened 
British  warships?  And  how  is  it  that  both  sides  pray 
to  the  same  God  for  victory?  There  must  be  something 
wrong  somewhere." 

It  was  not  often  men  talked  like  that,  except  to  some 
chaplain  who  was  a  human,  comradely  soul,  some  Catholic 
"padre"  who  devoted  himself  fearlessly  to  their  bodily 
and  spiritual  needs,  risking  his  life  with  them,  or  to  some 
Presbyterian  minister  who  brought  them  hot  cocoa  under 
shell-fire,  with  a  cheery  word  or  two,  as  I  once  heard,  of 
"Keep  your  hearts  up,  my  lads,  and  your  heads  down." 

Most  of  the  men  became  f:^f  ^ligtQ,  with  odd  <;upf ''^Jt'^ n s 
in  the  place  of  faith.     "It's  no  good  worrying,"  they  said. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       143 

*^If^VOur  name  is  written  on  a  German  shell  you  can*t 
escanejt^nd  it  it  isn^t  written,  nothin^y  can  touch  yo_ii." 

Officers  as  well  as  men  had  this  fatalistic  belief  and 
superstitions  which  amused  them  and  helped  them. 
"Have  the  Huns  found  you  out  yet?"  I  asked  some  gun- 
ner officers  in  a  ruined  farmhouse  near  Kemmel  Hill. 
"Not  yet,"  said  one  of  them,  and  then  they  all  left  the 
table  at  which  we  were  at  lunch  and,  making  a  rush  for 
some  oak  beams,  embraced  them  ardently.  They  were 
touching  wood. 

"Take  this  with  you,"  said  an  Irish  officer  on  a  night 
I  went  to  Ypres,  "It  will  help  you  as  it  has  helped  me.\ 
It's  my  lucky  charm."  He  gave  me  a  little  bit  of  coall 
which  he  carried  in  his  tunic,  and  he  was  so  earnest  about) 
it  that  I  took  it  without  a  smile — and  felt  the  safer  for  it/ 

Once  in  a  while  the  men  went  home  on  seven  days' 
leave,  or  four,  and  then  cam.e  back  again,  gloomily,  with 
a  curious  kind  of  hatred  of  England  because  the  people 
there  seemed  so  callous  to  their  suffering,  so  utterly  with- 
out understanding,  so  "damned  cheerful."  They  hated 
the  smiling  women  in  the  streets.  They  loathed  the  old 
men  who  said,  "If  I  had  six  sons  I  would  sacrifice  them 
all  in  the  Sacred  Cause."  They  desired  that  profiteers 
should  die  by  poison-gas.  They  prayed  God  to  get  the 
Germans  to  send  Zeppelins  to  England — to  make  the 
people  know  what  war  meant.  Their  leave  had  done 
them  no  good  at  all. 

From  a  week-end  at  home  I  stood  among  a  number  of 
soldiers  who  were  going  back  to  the  front,  after  one  of 
those  leaves.  The  boat  warped  away  from  the  pier,  the 
M.  T.  O.  and  a  small  group  of  officers,  detectives,  and 
Red  Cross  men  disappeared  behind  an  empty  train,  and 
the  "revenants"  on  deck  stared  back  at  the  cliffs  of  Eng- 
land across  a  widening  strip  of  sea. 

"Back  to  the  bloody  old  trenches,"  said  a  voice,  and 
the  words  ended  with  a  hard  laugh.  They  were  spoken 
by  a  young  officer  of  the  Guards,  whom  I  had  seen  on  the 


144  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

platform  of  Victoria  saying  good-by  to  a  pretty  woman, 
who  had  put  her  hand  on  his  shoulder  for  a  moment,  and 
said,  "Do  be  careful,  Desmond,  for  my  sake!"  After- 
ward he  had  sat  in  the  corner  of  his  carriage,  staring  with 
a  fixed  gaze  at  the  rushing  countryside,  but  seeing  nothing 
of  it,  perhaps,  as  his  thoughts  traveled  backward.  (A 
few  days  later  he  was  blown  to  bits  by  a  bomb — an  acci- 
dent of  war.) 

A  little  man  on  deck  came  up  to  me  and  said,  in  a 
melancholy  way,  "You  knov/  who  I  am,  don't  you,  sir.'"' 

I  hadn't  the  least  idea  who  he  was — this  little  ginger- 
haired  soldier  with  a  wizened  and  wistful  face.  But  I 
saw  that  he  wore  the  claret-colored  ribbon  of  the  V.  C. 
on  his  khaki  tunic.  He  gave  me  his  name,  and  said  the 
papers  had  "done  him  proud,"  and  that  they  had  made  a 
lot  of  him  at  home — -presentations,  receptions,  speeches, 
Lord  Mayor's  addresses,  cheering  crowds,  and  all  that. 
He  was  one  of  our  Lleroes,  thougli  one  couldn't  tell  it  by 
the  look  of  him. 

"Now  I'm  going  back  to  the  trenches,"  he  said,  gloom- 
ily. "Same  old  business  and  one  of  the  crowd  again." 
He  was  suffering  from  the  reaction  of  popular  idolatry. 
He  felt  hipped  because  no  one  made  a  fuss  of  him  now 
or  bothered  about  his  claret-colored  ribbon.  The  stalf- 
officers,  chaplains,  brigade  majors,  regimental  officers,  and 
army  nurses  were  more  interested  in  an  airship,  a  silver 
fish  with  shining  gills  and  a  humming  song  in  its  stomach. 

France  .  .  .  and  the  beginning  of  what  the  little  V.  C. 
had  called  "the  same  old  business."  There  was  the  long 
fleet  of  motor-ambulances  as  a  reminder  of  the  ultimate 
business  of  all  those  young  men  in  khaki  whom  I  had 
seen  drilling  in  the  Embankment  gardens  and  shoulder- 
ing their  way  down  the  Strand. 

Some  stretchers  were  being  carried  to  the  lift  which 
goes  down  to  the  deck  of  the  hospital-ship,  on  whicli  an 
officer  was  ticking  off  each  wounded  body  after  a  glance 
at  the  label  tied  to  the  man's  tunic.  Several  young 
officers  lay  under  the  blankets  on  these  stretchers,  and 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       145 

one  of  them  caught  my  eye  and  smiled  as  I  looked  down 
upon  him.  The  same  old  business  and  the  same  old 
pluck. 

I  motored  down  the  long,  straight  roads  of  France 
eastward,  toward  that  network  of  lines  which  are  the  end 
of  all  journeys  after  a  few  days'  leave,  home  and  back 
again.  The  same  old  sights  and  sounds  and  smells 
which,  as  long  as  memory  lasts,  to  men  who  had  the  luck 
to  live  through  the  war,  will  haunt  them  for  the  rest  of 
life,  and  speak  of  Flanders. 

The  harvest  was  nearly  gathered  in,  and  where,  a  week 
or  two  before,  there  had  been  fields  of  high,  bronzed  corn 
there  were  now  long  stretches  of  stubbled  ground  waiting 
for  the  plow.  The  wheat-sheaves  had  been  piled  into 
stacks  or,  from  many  great  fields,  carted  away  to  the 
red-roofed  barns  below  the  black  old  windmills  whose 
sails  were  motionless  because  no  breath  of  air  stirred  on 
this  September  afternoon.  The  smell  of  Flemish  villages 
— a  mingled  odor  of  sun-baked  thatch  and  bakeries  and 
manure  heaps  and  cows  and  ancient  vapors  stored  up 
through  the  centuries — was  overborne  by  a  nev/  and  more 
pungent  aroma  which  crept  over  the  fields  with  the  even- 
ing haze. 

It  was  a  sad,  melancholy  smell,  telling  of  corruption 
and  death.  It  was  the  first  breath  of  autumn,  and  I 
shivered  a  little.  Must  there  be  another  winter  of  war? 
The  old  misery  of  darkness  and  dampness  was  creeping 
up  through  the  splendor  of  September  sunshine. 

Those  soldiers  did  not  seem  to  smell  it,  or,  if  their 
nostrils  were  keen,  to  mind  its  menace — those  soldiers 
who  came  marching  down  the  road,  with  tanned  faces. 
How  fine  they  looked,  and  how  hard,  and  how  cheerful, 
with  their  lot!  Speak  to  them  separately  and  every  man 
would  "grouse"  at  the  duration  of  the  war  and  swear 
that  he  was  "fed  up"  with  it.  Homesickness  assailed 
them  at  times  with  a  deadly  nostalgia.  The  hammering 
of  shell-fire,  .which  takes  its  daily  toll,  spoiled  their  tem- 
per and  shook  their  nerves,  as  far  as  a  British  soldier  had 


146  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

any  nerves,  which  I  used  to  sometimes  doubt,  until  I  saw 
again  the  shell-shock  cases. 

But  again  I  heard  their  laughter  and  an  old  song 
whistled  vilely  out  of  tune>  but  cheerful  to  the  tramp  of 
their  feet.  They  were  going  back  to  the  trenches  after 
a  spell  in  a  rest-camp,  to  the  same  old  business  of  whizz- 
bangs  and  pip-squeaks,  and  dugouts,  and  the  smell  of  wet 
clay  and  chloride  of  lime,  and  the  life  of  earth-men  who 
once  belonged  to  a  civilization  v/hich  had  passed.  And 
they  went  whistling  on  their  way,  because  it  was  the  very 
best  thing  to  do. 

One  picked  up  the  old  landmarks  again,  and  got  back 
into  the  "feel"  of  the  war  zone.  There  were  the  five  old 
windmills  of  Cassel  that  wave  their  arms  up  the  hill  road, 
and  the  estaminets  by  v/hich  one  found  one's  way  down 
country  lanes — "The  Veritable  Cuckoo"  and  "The  Lost 
Corner"  and  "The  Flower  of  the  Fields" — and  the  first 
smashed  roofs  and  broken  barns  which  led  to  the  area  of 
constant  shell-fire.     Ugh! 

So  it  was  still  going  on,  this  bloody  murder!  There 
were  some  more  cottages  down  in  the  village,  where  we 
had  tea  a  month  before.  And  in  the  market-place  of  a 
sleepy  old  town  the  windows  were  mostly  broken  and 
some  shops  had  gone  into  dust  and  ashes.  That  was 
new  since  we  last  passed  this  way. 

London  was  only  seven  hours  away,  but  the  hours  on 
leave  there  seemed  a  year  ago  already.  The  men  who 
had  come  back,  after  sleeping  in  civilization  with  a  blessed 
sense  of  safety,  had  a  few  minutes  of  queer  surprise  that, 
after  all,  this  business  of  war  was  something  more  real 
than  a  fantastic  nightmare,  and  then  put  on  their  moral 
cloaks  against  the  chill  and  grim  reality,  for  another  long 
spell  of  it.  Very  quickly  the  familiarity  of  it  all  came 
back  to  them  and  became  the  normal  instead  of  the 
abnormal.  They  were  back  again  to  the  settled  state  of 
war,  as  boys  go  back  to  public  schools  after  the  wrench 
from  home,  and  find  that  the  holiday  is  only  the  incident 
and  school  the  more  enduring  experience. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  COURAGE       147 

There  were  no  new  impressions,  only  the  repetition  of 
old  impressions.  So  I  found  when  I  heard  the  guns  again 
and  watched  the  shells  bursting  about  Ypres  and  over 
Kemmel  Ridge  and  Messines  church  tower. 

Two  German  airplanes  passed  overhead,  and  the  hum 
of  their  engines  was  loud  in  my  ears  as  I  lay  in  the  grass. 
Our  shrapnel  burst  about  them,  but  did  not  touch  their 
wings.  All  around  there  was  the  slamming  of  great  guns, 
and  I  sat  chewing  a  bit  of  straw  by  the  side  of  a  shell-hole, 
thinking  in  the  same  old  way  of  the  utter  senselessness  of 
all  this  noise  and  hate  and  sudden  death  which  encircled 
me  for  miles.  No  amount  of  meditation  would  screw  a 
new  meaning  out  of  it  all.  It  was  just  the  commonplace 
of  life  out  here. 

The  routine  of  it  went  on.  The  officer  who  came  back 
from  home  stepped  into  his  old  place,  and  after  the  first 
greeting  of,  "Hullo,  old  man!  Had  a  good  time.f*"  found 
his  old  job  waiting  for  him.  So  there  was  a  new  briga- 
dier-general?    Quick  promotion,  by  Jove! 

Four  men  had  got  knocked  out  that  morning  at  D4, 
and  it  was  rotten  bad  luck  that  the  sergeant-major  should 
have  been  among  them.  A  real  good  fellow.  However, 
there's  that  court  martial  for  this  afternoon,  and,  by  the 
by,  when  is  that  timber  coming  up?  Can't  build  the 
new  dugout  if  there's  no  decent  wood  to  be  got  by  stealing 
or  otherwise.  You  heard  how  the  men  got  strafed  in  their 
billets  the  other  day?     Dirty  work! 

The  man  who  had  come  back  went  into  the  trenches 
and  had  a  word  or  two  with  the  N.  C.  O.'s.  Then  he 
went  into  his  own  dugout.  The  mice  had  been  getting 
at  his  papers.  Oh  yes,  that's  where  he  left  his  pipe!  It 
was  lying  under  the  trestle-table,  just  where  he  dropped 
it  before  going  on  leave.  The  clay  walls  were  a  bit  wet 
after  the  rains.  He  stood  with  a  chilled  feeling  in  this 
little  hole  of  his,  staring  at  every  familiar  thing  in  it. 

Tacked  to  the  wall  was  the  portrait  of  a  woman.  He 
said  good-by  to  her  at  Victoria  Station.  How  long  ago? 
Surely  more  than  seven  hours,  or  seven  years.  .  .  .  Out- 


14^  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

side  there  were  the  old  noises.  The  guns  were  at  it  again. 
That  was  a  trench-mortar.  The  enemy's  eight-inch  how- 
itzers were  plugging  away.  What  a  beastly  row  that 
machine-gun  was  making!  Playing  on  the  same  old  spot. 
Why  couldn't  they  leave  It  alone,  the  asses.''  .  .  .  Anyhow, 
there  was  no  doubt  about  it — he  had  come  back  again. 
Back  to  the  trenches  and  the  same  old  business. 

There  was  a  mine  to  be  blown  up  that  night  and  it 
would  make  a  pretty  mess  in  the  enemy's  lines.  The 
colonel  was  very  cheerful  about  it,  and  explained  that  a 
good  deal  of  sapping  had  been  done.  "We've  got  the 
bulge  on  'em,"  he  said,  referring  to  the  enemy's  failures 
in  this  class  of  work.  In  the  mess  all  the  officers  were 
carrying  on  as  usual,  making  the  same  old  jokes. 

The  man  who  had  come  back  got  back  also  the  spirit 
of  the  thing  with  astonishing  rapidity.  That  other  life 
of  his,  away  there  in  old  London,  was  shut  up  in  the  cup- 
board of  his  heart. 

So  it  went  on  and  on  until  the  torture  of  Its  boredom 
was  broken  by  the  crash  of  big  battles,  and  the  New 
Armies,  which  had  been  learning  lessons  in  the  School  of 
Courage,  went  forward  to  the  great  test,  and  passed,  with 
honor. 


Part  Three 

THE  NATURE 
OF  A  BATTLE 


HOW  THE  NEW  ARMY  WENT  TO  LOOS 


IN  September  of  191 5  the  Commander-in-Chief  and 
his  staff  were  busy  with  preparations  for  a  battle,  in 
conjunction  with  the  French,  which  had  ambitious 
objects.  These  have  never  been  stated  because  they  were 
not  gained  (and  it  was  the  habit  of  our  High  Command 
to  conceal  its  objectives  and  minimize  their  importance 
if  their  hopes  were  unfulfilled),  but  beyond  doubt  the 
purpose  of  the  battle  was  to  gain  possession  of  Lens  and 
its  coal-fields,  and  by  striking  through  Hulluch  and 
Haisnes  to  menace  the  German  occupation  of  Lille.  On 
the  British  front  the  key  of  the  enemy's  position  was 
Hill  70,  to  the  north  of  Lens,  beyond  the  village  of  Loos, 
and  the  capture  of  that  village  and  that  hill  was  the  first 
essential  of  success. 

The  assault  on  these  positions  was  to  be  made  by  two 
New  Army  divisions  of  the  4th  Corps:  the  47th  (Lon- 
don) Division,  and  the  15th  (Scottish)  Division.  They 
were  to  be  supported  by  the  nth  Corps,  consisting  of  the 
Guards  and  tv/o  new  and  untried  divisions,  the  21st  and 
the  24th.  The  Cavalry  Corps  (less  the  3d  Cavalry 
Division  under  General  Fanshawe)  was  in  reserve  far  back 
at  St.-Pol  and  Pernes;  and  the  Indian  Cavalry  Corps 
under  General  Remington  was  at  DouUens;  "to  be  in 
readiness,"  wrote  Sir  John  French,  "to  co-operate  with 
the  French  cavalry  in  exploiting  any  success  which  might 
be  attained  by  the  French  and  British  forces."  .  .  .  Oh, 
wonderful  optimism!  In  that  Black  Country  of  France, 
scattered  with  mining  villages  in  which  every  house  was 
a  machine-gun  fort,  with  slag  heaps  and  pit-heads  which 


1^3  MOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

were  formidable  redoubts,  with  trenches  and  barbed 
wire  and  brick-stacks,  and  quarries,  organized  for  de- 
fense in  siege-warfare,  cavalry  might  as  well  have  ridden 
through  hell  with  hope  of  ''exploiting"  success.  .  .  . 
"Plans  for  effective  co-operation  were  fully  arranged  be- 
tween the  cavalry  commanders  of  both  armies,"  wrote 
our  Commander-in-Chief  in  his  despatch.  I  can  imagine 
those  gallant  old  gentlemen  devising  their  plans,  with 
grave  courtesy,  over  large  maps,  and  A.  D.  C.'s  clicking 
heels  in  attendance,  and  an  air  of  immense  wisdom  and 
most  cheerful  assurance  governing  the  proceedings  in  the 
salon  of  a  French  chateau.  .  .  .  The  3d  Cavalry  Division, 
less  one  brigade,  was  assigned  to  the  First  Army  as  a 
reserve,  and  moved  into  the  area  of  the  4th  Corps  on  the 
2 1st  and  226.  of  September. 

II 

The  movements  of  troops  and  the  preparations  for  big 
events  revealed  to  every  British  soldier  in  France  the 
"secret"  of  the  coming  battle.  Casualty  clearing-sta- 
tions were  ordered  to  make  ready  for  big  numbers  of 
wounded.  That  was  always  one  of  the  first  signs  of  ap- 
proaching massacre.  Vast  quantities  of  shells  were  being 
brought  up  to  the  rail-heads  and  stacked  in  the  "dumps." 
They  were  the  first-fruit  of  the  speeding  up  of  munition- 
factories  at  home  after  the  public  outcry  against  shell 
shortage  and  the  lack  of  high  explosives.  Well,  at  last 
the  guns  would  not  be  starved.  There  was  enough  high- 
explosive  force  available  to  blast  the  German  trenches  off 
the  map.  So  it  seemed  to  our  innocence — though  years 
afterward  we  knew  that  no  bombardment  would  destroy 
all  earthworks  such  as  Germans  made,  and  that  always 
machine-guns  would  slash  our  infantry  advancing  over 
the  chaos  of  mangled  ground. 

Behind  our  lines  in  France,  in  scores  of  villages  where 
our  men  were  quartered,  there  was  a  sense  of  impending 
fate.     Soldiers  of  the  New  Army  knew  that  in  a  little 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  153 

while  the  lessons  they  had  learned  in  the  School  of  Cour- 
age would  be  put  to  a  more  frightful  test  than  that  of 
holding  trenches  in  stationary  warfare.  Their  boredom, 
the  intolerable  monotony  of  that  routine  life,  would  be 
broken  by  more  sensational  drama,  and  some  of  them 
were  glad  of  that,  and  said:  *' Let's  get  on  with  it.  Any- 
thing rather  than  that  deadly  stagnation."  And  others, 
who  guessed  they  were  chosen  for  the  coming  battle,  and 
had  a  clear  vision  of  what  kind  of  things  would  happen 
(they  knew  something  about  the  losses  at  Neuve  Chapelle 
and  Festubert),  becamie  more  thoughtful  than  usual, 
deeply  introspective,  wondering  how  many  days  of  life 
they  had  left  to  them. 

Life  was  good  out  of  the  line  in  that  September  of  '15. 
The  land  of  France  was  full  of  beauty,  with  bronzed  corn- 
stooks  in  the  fields,  and  scarlet  poppies  in  the  grass,  and 
a  golden  sunlight  on  old  barns  and  on  little  white  churches 
and  in  orchards  heavy  with  fruit.  It  was  good  to  go  into 
the  garden  of  a  French  chateau  and  pluck  a  rose  and 
smell  its  sweetness,  and  think  back  to  England,  where 
other  roses  were  blooming.  England!  .  .  .  And  in  a  few 
days — who  could  sa}^'' — perhaps  eternal  sleep  somewhere 
near  Lens. 

Some  officers  of  the  Guards  came  into  the  garden  of 
the  little  house  where  I  Hved  at  that  time  with  other  on- 
lookers. It  was  an  untidy  garden,  with  a  stretch  of  grass- 
plot  too  rough  to  be  called  a  lawn,  but  v/ith  pleasant 
shade  under  the  trees,  and  a  potager  with  raspberries 
and  currants  on  the  bushes,  and  flower-beds  where  red 
and  white  roses  dropped  their  petals. 

Two  officers  of  the  Scots  Guards,  inseparable  friends, 
cam.e  to  gossip  with  us,  and  read  the  papers,  and  drink 
a  little  whisky  in  the  evenings,  and  pick  the  raspberries. 
They  were  not  professional  soldiers.  One  of  them  had 
been  a  stock-broker,  the  other  **  something  in  the  city." 
They  disliked  the  army  system  with  an  undisguised  hatred 
and  contempt.  They  hated  war  with  a  ferocity  which 
was  only  a  little  "camouflaged"  by  the  irony  and  the 


154  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

brutality  of  their  anecdotes  of  war's  little  comedies.  They 
took  a  grim  delight  in  the  humor  of  corpses,  lice,  bayonet- 
work,  and  the  sniping  of  fair-haired  German  boys.  They 
laughed,  almost  excessively,  at  these  attributes  of  warfare, 
and  one  of  them  used  to  remark,  after  some  such  anec- 
dote, "And  once  I  was  a  little  gentleman!" 

He  was  a  gentleman  still,  with  a  love  of  nature  in  his 
heart — I  saw  him  touch  the  petals  of  living  roses  with  a 
caress  in  his  finger-tips — and  with  a  spiritual  revolt  against 
the  beastliness  of  this  new  job  of  his,  although  he  was  a 
strong,  hard  fellow,  without  weakness  of  sentiment.  His 
close  comrade  was  of  more  dehcate  fiber,  a  gentle  soul, 
not  made  for  soldiering  at  all,  but  rather  for  domestic 
life,  with  children  about  him,  and  books.  As  the  even- 
ings passed  in  this  French  village,  drawing  him  closer  to 
Loos  by  the  flight  of  time,  I  saw  the  trouble  in  his  eyes 
which  he  tried  to  hide  by  smiling  and  by  courteous  con- 
versation. He  was  being  drawn  closer  to  Loos  and  farther 
away  from  the  wife  who  knew  nothing  of  what  that  name 
meant  to  her  and  to  him. 

Other  officers  of  the  Guards  came  into  the  garden — 
Grenadiers.  There  v/ere  two  young  brothers  of  an  old 
family  who  had  always  sent  their  sons  to  war.  They 
looked  absurdly  young  when  they  took  oflf  their  tunics 
and  played  a  game  of  cricket,  with  a  club  for  a  bat,  and 
a  tennis-ball.  They  were  just  schoolboys,  but  with  the 
gravity  of  men  who  knew  that  life  is  short.  I  watched 
their  young  athletic  figures,  so  clean-limbed,  so  full  of 
grace,  as  they  threw  the  ball,  and  had  a  vision  of  them 
lying  mangled. 

An  Indian  prince  came  into  the  garden.  It  was  *'Ran- 
jitsinji,"  who  had  carried  his  bat  to  many  a  pavilion 
where  English  men  and  women  had  clapped  their  hands 
to  him,  on  glorious  days  when  there  was  sunlight  on  Eng- 
lish lawns.  He  took  the  club  and  stood  at  the  wicket 
and  was  bowled  third  ball  by  a  man  who  had  only  played 
cricket  after  ye  manner  of  Stratford-atte-Bow.  But  then 
he  found  himself,  handled  the  club  like  a  sword,  watched 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  155 

the  ball  with  a  falcon's  eye,  played  with  It.  He  was  on 
the  staff  of  the  Indian  Cavalry  Corps,  which  was  "to 
co-operate  in  exploiting  any  success." 

"To-morrow  we  move,"  said  one  of  the  Scots  Guards 
officers.  The  colonel  of  the  battalion  came  to  dinner  at 
our  mess,  sitting  down  to  a  white  tablecloth  for  the  last 
time  in  his  life.  They  played  a  game  of  cards,  and  went 
away  earlier  than  usual. 

Two  of  them  lingered  after  the  colonel  had  gone.  They 
drank  more  whisky. 

"We  must  be  going,"  they  said,  but  did  not  go. 

The  delicate-looking  man  could  not  hide  the  trouble  in 
his  eyes. 

"I  sha'n't  be  killed  this  time,"  he  said  to  a  friend  of 
mine.     "I  shall  be  badly  wounded." 

The  hard  man,  who  loved  flowers,  drank  his  fourth 
glass  of  whisky. 

"It's  going  to  be  damned  uncomfortable,"  he  said. 
"I  wish  the  filthy  thing  were  over.  Our  generals  will 
probably  arrange  some  glorious  little  massacres.  I  know 
'em! .  .  .  Well,  good  night,  all." 

They  went  out  into  the  darkness  of  the  village  lane. 
Battalions  were  already  on  the  move,  in  the  night.  Their 
steady  tramp  of  feet  beat  on  the  hard  road.  Their  dark 
figures  looked  like  an  army  of  ghosts.  Sparks  were  splut- 
tering out  of  the  funnels  of  army  cookers.  A  British 
soldier  in  full  field  kit  was  kissing  a  woman  in  the 
shadow-world  of  an  estanmiet.  I  passed  close  to  them, 
almost  touching  them  before  I  was  aware  of  their 
presence. 

"Bonne  chance!"  said  the  woman.  "Quand  tu  re- 
viens — " 

"One  more  kiss,  lassie,"  said  the  man. 

"Mais  comme  tu  es  gourmand,  toi!" 

He  kissed  her  savagely,  hungrily.  Then  he  lurched  ofi* 
the  sidewalk  and  formed  up  with  other  men  in  the 
darkness. 


156  N'OW  IT  CAN   P.E  TOLD 

The  Scots  Guards  moved  next  morning.  I  stood  by 
the  side  of  the  colonel,  v.ho  was  in  a  gruff  niood. 

"It  looks  like  rain,"  he  said,  sniffing  the  air.  "It  will 
probably  rain  like  hell  when  the  battle  begins." 

I  think  he  was  killed  somewhere  by  Fosse  8.  The  two 
comrades  in  the  Scots  Guards  were  badly  wounded.  One 
of  the  young  brothers  was  killed  and  the  other  maimed. 
I  found  their  names  in  the  casualty  lists  which  tilled  col- 
umns of  The  Times  for  a  long  time  after  Loos. 


Ill 

The  town  of  Bethune  was  the  capital  of  our  army  in 
the  Black  Country  of  the  French  coal-fields.  It  was  not 
much  shelled  in  those  days,  though  afterward — years  after- 
ward^t  was  badly  damaged  by  long-range  guns,  so  that 
its  people  fled,  at  last,  after  living  so  long  on  the  edge  of 
war. 

Its  people  were  friendly  to  our  men,  and  did  not  raise 
their  prices  exorbitantly.  There  were  good  shops  in  the 
town — "as  good  as  Paris,"  said  soldiers  who  had  never 
been  to  Paris,  but  found  these  plate-glass  windows  daz- 
zling, after  trench  life,  and  loved  to  see  the  "mamzelles" 
behind  the  counters  and  walking  out  smartly,  with  little 
high-heeled  shoes.  There  were  tea-shops,  crov.ded  al- 
waj's  with  officers  on  their  way  to  the  line  or  just  out  of 
it,  and  they  liked  to  speak  French  with  the  girls  who 
served  them.  Those  girls  saw  the  hunger  in  tiiose  men's 
eyes,  who  watched  every  movement  they  made,  who  tried 
to  touch  their  hands  and  their  frocks  in  passing.  They 
knew  they  were  desired,  as  daughters  of  Eve,  by  boys 
who  were  starved  of  love.  They  took  that  as  part  of 
their  business,  distributing  cakes  and  buns  without  favor, 
with  laughter  in  their  eyes,  and  a  merry  word  or  two. 
Xow  and  then,  when  they  had  leisure,  they  retired  to 
inner  rooms,  divided  by  curtains  from  the  shop,  and  sat 
on  the  knees  of  young  British  officers,  while  others  played 
ragtime  or  sentimental  ballads  on  untuned  pianos.  There 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  157 

was  champagne  as  well  as  tea  to  be  had  in  these  bun- 
shops,  but  the  A.  P.  M.  was  down  on  disorder  or  riotous 
gaiety,  and  there  were  no  orgies.  "Pas  d'orgies,"  said 
the  young  ladies  severely  when  things  were  getting  a 
Httle  too  lively.     They  had  to  think  of  their  business. 

Down  side-streets  here  and  there  were  houses  where 
other  women  lived,  not  so  severe  in  their  point  of  view. 
Their  business,  indeed,  did  not  permit  of  severity,  and 
they  catered  for  the  hunger  of  men  exiled  year  after  year 
from  their  own  home-life  and  from  decent  womanhood. 
They  gave  the  base  counterfeit  of  love  in  return  for  a  few 
francs,  and  there  were  long  lines  of  men — English,  Irish, 
and  Scottish  soldiers — who  waited  their  turn  to  get  that 
vile  imitation  of  life's  romance  from  women  who  were 
bought  and  paid  for.  Our  men  paid  a  higher  price  than 
a  few  francs  for  the  Circe's  cup  of  pleasure,  v/hich  changed 
them  into  swine  for  a  while,  until  the  spell  passed,  and 
would  have  blasted  their  souls  if  God  were  not  under- 
standing of  human  weakness  and  of  war.  They  paid  in 
their  bodies,  if  not  in  their  souls,  those  boys  of  ours  who 
loved  life  and  beauty  and  gentle  things,  and  lived  in  filth 
and  shell-fire,  and  were  trained  to  kill,  and  knew  that 
death  was  hunting  for  them  and  had  all  the  odds  of  luck. 
Their  children  and  their  children's  children  will  pay  also 
for  the  sins  of  their  fathers,  by  rickety  limbs  and  water- 
on-the-brain,  and  madness,  and  tuberculosis,  and  other 
evils  which  are  the  wages  of  sin,  which  flourished  most 
rankly  behind  the  fields  of  war. 

The  inhabitants  of  Bethune — the  shopkeepers,  and 
brave  little  families  of  France,  and  bright-eyed  girls,  and 
frowzy  women,  and  heroines,  and  harlots — came  out  into 
the  streets  before  the  battle  of  Loos,  and  watched  the 
British  army  pouring  through — battalions  of  Londoners 
and  Scots,  in  full  fighting-kit,  with  hot  sweat  on  their 
faces,  and  grim  eyes,  and  endless  columns  of  field-guns 
and  limbers,  drawn  by  hard-mouthed  mules  cursed  and 
thrashed  by  their  drivers,  and  ambulances,  empty  now,  and 
wagons,  and  motor-lorries,  hour  after  hour,  day  after  day. 


158  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"Bonne  chance!"  cried  the  women,  waving  hands  and 
handkerchiefs. 

"Les  pauvres  enfants!"  said  the  old  women,  wiping 
their  eyes  on  dirty  aprons.  "We  know  how  it  is.  They 
will  be  shot  to  pieces.  It  is  always  like  that,  in  this  sacred 
war.  Oh,  those  sacred  pigs  of  Germans!  Those  dirty 
Boches!     Those  sacred  bandits!" 

"They  are  going  to  give  the  Boches  a  hard  knock,"  said 
grizzled  men,  w^ho  remembered  in  their  boyhood  another 
war.  "The  Enghsh  army  is  ready.  How  splendid  they 
are,  those  boys!  And  ours  are  on  the  right  of  them. 
This  time — !" 

"Mother  of  God,  hark  at  the  guns!" 

At  night,  as  dark  fell,  the  people  of  Bethune  gathered 
in  the  great  square  by  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  which  afterward 
was  smashed,  and  listened  to  the  laboring  of  the  guns 
over  there  by  Vermelles  and  Noeux-les-Mines,  and  Gre- 
nay,  and  beyond  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette,  where  the 
French  guns  were  at  work.  There  were  loud,  earth- 
shaking  rumblings,  and  now  and  then  enormous  concus- 
sions. In  the  night  sky  Hghts  rose  in  long,  spreading 
bars  of  ruddy  luminance,  in  single  flashes,  in  sudden 
torches  of  scarlet  flame  rising  to  the  clouds  and  touching 
them  with  rosy  feathers. 

"'Cre  nom  de  Dieu!"  said  French  peasants,  on  the  edge 
of  all  that,  in  villages  like  Gouy,  Servins,  Heuchin,  Hou- 
dain,  Grenay,  Bruay,  and  Pernes.  "The  caldron  is 
boiling  up.  .  .  .  There  will  be  a  fine  pot-au-feu." 

They  wondered  if  their  own  sons  would  be  in  the  broth. 
Some  of  them  knew,  and  crossed  themselves  by  wayside 
shrines  for  the  sake  of  their  sons'  souls,  or  in  their  esta- 
minets  cursed  the  Germans  with  the  same  old  curses  for 
having  brought  all  this  woe  into  the  world. 

IV 

In  those  villages — Heuchin,  Houdain,  Tillers,  and 
others — on  the  edge  of  the  Black  Country  the  Scottish 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  159 

troops  of  the  15th  Division  were  in  training  for  the  arena, 
practising  attacks  on  trenches  and  villages,  getting  a  fine 
edge  of  efficiency  on  to  bayonet-work  and  bombing, 
and  having  their  morale  heightened  by  addresses  from 
brigadiers  and  divisional  commanders  on  the  glorious 
privilege  which  was  about  to  be  theirs  of  leading  the 
assault,  and  on  the  joys  as  well  as  the  duty  of  killing 
Germans. 

In  one  battalion  of  Scots — the  loth  Gordons,  who  were 
afterward  the  8/ioth — ^there  were  conferences  of  com- 
pany commanders  and  whispered  consultations  of  sub- 
alterns. They  were  "Kitchener"  men,  from  Edinburgh 
and  Aberdeen  and  other  towns  in  the  North.  I  came 
to  know  them  all  after  this  battle,  and  gave  them  fancy 
names  in  my  despatches:  the  Georgian  gentleman,  as 
handsome  as  Beau  Brummell,  and  a  gallant  soldier,  who 
was  several  times  wounded,  but  came  back  to  command 
his  old  battaHon,  and  then  was  wounded  again  nigh  unto 
death,  but  came  back  again;  and  Honest  John,  slow  of 
speech,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eyes,  careless  of  shell  splinters 
flying  around  his  bullet  head,  hard  and  tough  and  cunning 
in  war;  and  little  Ginger,  with  his  whimsical  face  and 
freckles,  and  love  of  pretty  girls  and  all  children,  until  he 
was  killed  in  Flanders;  and  the  Permanent  Temporary 
Lieutenant  v/ho  fell  on  the  Somme;  and  the  Giant  who 
had  a  splinter  through  his  brain  beyond  Arras;  and  many 
other  Highland  gentlemen,  and  one  English  padre  who 
went  with  them  always  to  the  trenches,  until  a  shell  took 
his  head  off  at  the  crossroads. 

It  was  the  first  big  attack  of  the  15th  Division.  They 
were  determined  to  go  fast  and  go  far.  Their  pride  of 
race  was  stronger  than  the  strain  on  their  nerves.  Many 
of  them.,  I  am  certain,  had  no  sense  of  fear,  no  apprehen- 
sion of  death  or  wounds.  Excitement,  the  comradeship 
of  courage,  the  rivalry  of  battalions,  lifted  them  above 
anxiety  before  the  battle  began,  though  here  and  there 
men  like  Ginger,  of  more  delicate  fiber,  of  imagination 
as  well  as  courage,  must  have  stared  in  great  moments 


i6o  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOlT) 

at  the  grisly  specter  toward  whom  they  would  soon  be 
walking. 

In  other  villages  were  battalions  of  the  47th  London 
Division.  They,  too,  were  to  be  In  the  first  line  of  attack, 
on  the  right  of  the  Scots.  They,  too,  had  to  win  honor 
for  the  New  Army  and  old  London.  They  were  a  dif- 
ferent crowd  from  the  Scots,  not  so  hard,  not  so  steel- 
nerved,  with  more  sensibility  to  suffering,  more  imagina- 
tion, more  instinctive  revolt  against  the  butchery  that  was 
to  come.  But  they,  too,  had  been  "doped"  for  morale, 
their  nervous  tension  had  been  tightened  up  by  speeches 
addressed  to  their  spirit  and  tradition.  It  was  to  be 
London's  day  out.  They  were  to  fight  for  the  glory  of 
the  old  town  .  .  .  the  old  town  where  they  had  lived  in 
little  suburban  houses  with  flower-gardens,  where  they 
had  gone  up  by  the  early  morning  trains  to  city  offices 
and  government  offices  and  warehouses  and  shops,  in 
days  before  they  ever  guessed  they  would  go  a-soldiering, 
and  crouch  in  shell-holes  under  high  explosives,  and  thrust 
sharp  steel  into  German  bowels.  But  they  would  do  their 
best.  They  would  go  through  with  it.  They  would  keep 
their  sense  of  humor  and  make  cockney  jokes  at  death. 
They  would  show  the  stuff  of  London  pride. 

"Domine,  dirlge  nos!" 

I  knew  many  of  those  young  Londoners.  I  had  sat  in 
tea-shops  with  them  when  they  were  playing  dominoes, 
before  the  war,  as  though  that  were  the  most  important 
game  in  life.  I  had  met  one  of  them  at  a  fancy-dress  ball 
in  the  Albert  Hall,  when  he  was  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  and 
I  was  Richard  Sheridan.  Then  we  were  both  onlookers 
of  life — chroniclers  of  passing  history.  I  remained  the 
onlooker,  even  in  war,  but  my  friend  went  into  the  arena. 
He  was  a  Royal  P'usiher,  and  the  old  way  of  life  became  a 
dream  to  him  when  he  walked  toward  Loos,  and  after- 
ward sat  in  shell-craters  in  the  Somme  fields,  and  knew 
that  death  would  find  him,  as  it  did,  in  FLanders.  I  had 
played  chess  with  one  man  whom  afterward  I  met  as  a 
gunner  officer  at  Heninel,  near  Arras,  on  an  afternoon 


THE  NATURE  OF  A   BATTLE  i6i 

when  a  shell  had  killed  three  of  his  men  bathing  in  a  tank, 
and  other  shells  made  a  mess  of  blood  and  flesh  in  his 
wagon-lines.  We  both  wore  steel  hats,  and  he  was  the 
first  to  recognize  a  face  from  the  world  of  peace.  After 
his  greeting  he  swore  frightful  oaths,  cursing  the  war  and 
the  Staff.  His  nerves  were  all  jangled.  There  was  an- 
other officer  in  the  47th  London  Division  whom  I  had 
known  as  a  boy.  He  was  only  nineteen  when  he  enlisted, 
not  twenty  when  he  had  fought  through  several  battles. 
He  and  hundreds  like  him  had  been  playing  at  red 
Indians  in  Kensington  Gardens  a  few  years  before  an 
August  in  1914.  .  .  .  The  47th  London  Division,  going 
forward  to  the  battle  of  Loos,  was  made  up  of  men  whose 
souls  had  been  shaped  by  all  the  influences  of  environ- 
ment, habit,  and  tradition  in  w^hich  I  had  been  born  and 
bred.  Their  cradle  had  been  rocked  to  the  murmurous 
roar  of  London  traffic.  Their  first  adventures  had  been 
on  London  Commons.  The  lights  along  the  Embankment, 
the  excitement  of  the  streets,  the  faces  of  London  crowds, 
royal  pageantry — marriages,  crownings,  burials — on  the 
way  to  Westminster,  the  little  dramas  of  London  life,  had 
been  woven  into  the  fiber  of  their  thoughts,  and  it  was 
the  spirit  of  London  which  went  with  them  wherever 
they  walked  in  France  or  Flanders,  more  sensitive  than 
country  men  to  the  things  they  saw.  Some  of  them  had 
to  fight  against  their  nerves  on  the  way  to  Loos.  But 
their  spirit  was  exalted  by  a  nervous  stimulus  before  that 
battle,  so  that  they  did  freakish  and  fantastic  things  of 
courage. 


I  watched  the  preliminary  bombardment  of  the  Loos 
battlefields  from  a  black  slag  heap  beyond  Noeux-Ies- 
Mines,  and  afterward  went  on  the  battleground  up  to 
the  Loos  redoubt,  when  our  guns  and  the  enemy's  were 
hard  at  work;  and  later  still,  in  years  that  followed,  when 
there  was  never  a  silence  of  guns  in  those  fields,  came  to 
know  the  ground  from  many  points  of  view.     It  was  a 


i62  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

hideous  territory,  this  Black  Country  between  Lens  and 
Hulluch.  From  the  flat  country  below  the  distant  ridges 
of  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette  and  Vimy  there  rose  a  number 
of  high  black  cones  made  by  the  refuse  of  the  coal-mines, 
which  were  called  Fosses.  Around  those  black  mounds 
there  was  great  slaughter,  as  at  Fosse  8  and  Fosse  lo  and 
Puits  I4bis,  and  the  Double  Grassier  near  Loos,  because 
they  gave  observation  and  were  important  to  capture  or 
hold.  Near  them  were  the  pit-heads,  with  winding-gear 
in  elevated  towers  of  steel  which  were  smashed  and  twisted 
by  gun-lire;  and  in  Loos  itself  were  two  of  those  towers 
joined  by  steel  girders  and  gantries,  called  the  **Tower 
Bridge"  by  men  of  London.  Rows  of  red  cottages  where 
the  French  miners  had  lived  were  called  corons,  and  where 
they  were  grouped  into  large  units  they  were  called  cites^ 
like  the  Cite  St.-Auguste,  the  Cite  St. -Pierre,  and  the 
Cite  St. -Laurent,  beyond  Hill  70,  on  the  outskirts  of  Lens. 
All  those  places  were  abandoned  now  by  black-grimed 
men  who  had  fled  down  mine-shafts  and  galleries  with 
their  women  and  children,  and  had  come  up  on  our  side 
of  the  lines  at  Noeux-les-Mines  or  Bruay  or  Bully-Grenay, 
where  they  still  lived  close  to  the  war.  Shells  pierced 
the  roof  of  the  church  in  that  squalid  village  of  Noeux- 
les-Mines  and  smashed  some  of  the  cottages  and  killed 
some  of  the  people  now  and  then.  Later  in  the  war, 
when  aircraft  dropped  bombs  at  night,  a  new  peril  over- 
shadow^ed  them  with  terror,  and  they  hved  in  their  cellars 
after  dusk,  and  sometimes  were  buried  there.  But  they 
would  not  retreat  farther  back — not  many  of  them — and 
on  days  of  battle  I  saw  groups  of  French  miners  and 
dirty-bloused  girls  excited  by  the  passage  of  our  troops 
and  by  the  walking  wounded  who  came  stumbling  back, 
and  by  stretcher  cases  unloaded  from  ambulances  to  the 
floors  of  their  dirty  cottages.  Lligh  velocities  fell  in  some 
of  the  streets,  shrapnel-shells  whined  overhead  and  burst 
like  thunderclaps.  Young  hooligans  of  France  slouched 
around  with  their  hands  in  their  pockets,  talking  to  our 
men  in  a  queer  lingua  fianca,  grimacing  at  those  noises 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  163 

if  they  did  not  come  too  near.  I  saw  lightly  wounded 
girls  among  them,  with  bandaged  heads  and  hands,  but 
they  did  not  think  that  a  reason  for  escape.  With 
smoothly  braided  hair  they  gathered  round  British  soldiers 
in  steel  hats  and  clasped  their  arms  or  leaned  against 
their  shoulders.  They  had  known  many  of  those  men 
before.  They  were  their  sweethearts.  In  those  foul  little 
mining  towns  the  British  troops  had  liked  their  billets, 
because  of  the  girls  there.  London  boys  and  Scots  **kept 
company"  with  pretty  slatterns,  who  stole  their  badges 
for  keepsakes,  and  taught  them  a  base  patois  of  French, 
and  had  a  smudge  of  tears  on  their  cheeks  when  the  boys 
went  away  for  a  spell  in  the  ditches  of  death.  They  were 
kind-hearted  little  sluts  with  astounding  courage. 

''Aren't  you  afraid  of  this  place?"  I  asked  one  of  them 
in  Bully-Grenay  when  it  was  ''unhealthy"  there.  "You 
might  be  killed  here  any  minute." 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"Je  m'en  fiche  de  la  mort!"  ("I  don't  care  a  damn 
about  death.") 

I  had  the  same  answer  from  other  girls  in  other  places. 

That  was  the  mise-en-scene  of  the  battle  of  Loos — those 
mining  towns  behind  the  Hues,  then  a  maze  of  communi- 
cation trenches  entered  from  a  place  called  Philosophe, 
leading  up  to  the  trench-lines  beyond  Vermelles,  and 
running  northward  to  Cambrin  and  Givenchy,  opposite 
Hulluch,  Haisnes,  and  La  Bassee,  where  the  enemy  had 
his  trenches  and  earthworks  among  the  slag  heaps,  the 
pit-heads,  the  corons  and  the  cites^  all  broken  by  gun-fire, 
and  nowhere  a  sign  of  human  Hfe  aboveground,  in  which 
many  men  were  hidden. 

Storms  of  gun-fire  broke  loose  from  our  batteries  a 
week  before  the  battle.  It  was  our  first  demionstration 
of  those  stores  of  high-explosive  shells  which  had  been 
made  by  the  speeding  up  of  munition-work  in  England, 
and  of  a  gun-power  which  had  been  growing  steadily 
since  the  coming  out  of  the  New  Army.     The  weather 


104  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

was  heavy  with  mist  and  a  drizzle  of  rain.  Banks  of 
smoke  made  a  pall  over  all  the  arena  of  war,  and  it  was 
stabbed  and  torn  by  the  incessant  flash  of  bursting  shells. 
I  stood  on  the  slag  heap,  staring  at  this  curtain  of  smoke, 
hour  after  hour,  dazed  by  the  tumult  of  noise  and  by 
that  impenetrable  veil  which  hid  all  human  drama. 
T  here  was  no  movement  of  men  to  be  seen,  no  slaughter, 
no  heroic  episode — only  through  rifts  in  the  smoke  the 
blurred  edges  of  slag  heaps  and  pit-heads,  and  smoking 
ruins.  German  trenches  were  being  battered  in,  German 
dugouts  made  into  the  tombs  of  living  men,  German 
bodies  tossed  up  with  earth  and  stones — all  that  was 
certain  but  invisible. 

"Very  boring,"  said  an  officer  by  my  side.  "Not  a 
damn  thing  to  be  seen." 

"Our  men  ought  to  have  a  walk-over,"  said  an  opti- 
mist. "Any  living  German  must  be  a  gibbering  idiot 
with  shell-shock." 

"I  expect  they're  playing  cards  in  their  dugouts,"  said 
the  officer  who  was  bored.  "Even  high  explosives  don't 
go  down  very  deep." 

"It's  stupendous,  all  the  same.  By  God!  hark  at  that! 
It  seems  more  than  human.  It's  like  some  convulsion  of 
nature." 

"There's  no  adventure  in  modern  war,"  said  the  bored 
man.  "It's  a  dirty  scientific  business.  I'd  kill  all  chem- 
ists and  explosive  experts." 

"Our  men  will  have  adventure  enough  when  they  go 
over  the  top  at  dawn.  Hell  must  be  a  game  compared 
with  that." 

The  guns  went  on  pounding  away,  day  after  day,  labor- 
ing, pummeling,  hammering,  like  Thor  with  his  thunder- 
bolts. It  was  the  preparation  for  battle.  No  men  were 
out  of  the  trenches  yet,  though  some  were  being  killed 
there  and  elsewhere,  at  the  crossroads  by  Philosophe,  and 
outside  the  village  of  Masingarbe,  and  in  the  ruins  of 
Vcrmclles,  and  away  up  at  Cambrin  and  Givenchy.  The 
German  guns  were  answering  back   intermittently,   but 


THE  NATURE  OF  A   BATTLE  165 

holding  most  of  their  fire  until  human  flesh  came  out  into 
the  open.     The  battle  began  at  dawn  on  September  25th. 


VI 

In  order  to  distract  the  enemy's  attention  and  hold  his 
troops  away  from  the  main  battle-front,  "subsidiary  at- 
tacks" v/ere  made  upon  the  German  hues  as  far  north  as 
Bellewarde  Farm,  to  the  east  of  Ypres,  and  southward 
to  La  Bassee  Canal  at  Givenchy,  by  the  troops  of  the 
Second  and  Third  Armies.  This  object,  wrote  Sir  John 
French,  in  his  despatch,  "was  most  effectively  achieved." 
It  was  achieved  by  the  bloody  sacrifice  of  many  brave 
battalions  in  the  3d  and  14th  Divisions  (Yorkshire,  Royal 
Scots,  King's  Royal  Rifles,  and  others),  and  by  the 
Meerut  Division  of  the  Indian  Corps,  who  set  out  to 
attack  terrible  lines  without  sufficient  artillery  support, 
and  without  reserves  behind  them,  and  without  any 
chance  of  holding  the  ground  they  might  capture.  It  was 
part  of  the  system  of  war.  They  were  the  pawns  of 
"strategy,"  serving  a  high  purpose  in  a  way  that  seemed 
to  them  without  reason.  Not  for  them  was  the  glory  of 
a  victorious  assault.  Their  job  v/as  to  "demonstrate" 
by  exposing  their  bodies  to  devouring  fire,  and  by  attack- 
ing earthworks  which  they  were  not  expected  to  hold. 
Here  and  there  men  of  ours,  after  their  rush  over  No 
Man's  Land  under  a  deadly  sweep  of  machine-gun  fire, 
flung  themselves  into  the  enemy's  trenches,  bayoneting 
the  Germans  and  capturing  the  greater  part  of  their 
first  line.  There  they  lay  panting  among  wounded  and 
dead,  and  after  that  shoveled  up  earth  and  burrowed  to 
get  cover  from  the  shelling  which  was  soon  to  fall  on  them. 
Quickly  the  enemy  discovered  their  whereabouts  and  laid 
down  a  barrage  fire  which,  with  deadly  accuracy,  plowed 
up  their  old  front  line  and  tossed  it  about  on  the  pitch- 
forks of  bursting  shells.  Our  men's  bodies  were  mangled 
in  that  earth.  High  explosives  plunged  into  the  midst 
of  little  groups  crouching  in  holes  and  caverns  of  the 


i66  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ground,  and  scattered  their  limbs.  Living,  unwounded 
men  lay  under  those  screaming  shells  with  the  panting 
hearts  of  toads  under  the  beat  of  flails.  Wounded  men 
crawled  back  over  No  Man's  Land,  and  some  were  blown 
to  bits  as  they  crawled,  and  others  got  back.  Before 
nightfall,  in  the  dark,  a  general  retirement  was  ordered 
to  our  original  line  in  that  northern  sector,  owing  to  the 
increasing  casualties  under  the  relentless  work  of  the 
German  guns.  Like  ants  on  the  move,  thousands  of 
men  rose  from  the  upheaved  earth,  and  with  their  stom- 
achs close  to  it,  crouching,  came  back,  dragging  their 
wounded.     The  dead  were  left, 

"On  the  front  of  the  Third  Army,"  wrote  Sir  John 
French,  "subsidiary  operations  of  a  similar  nature  were 
successfully  carried  out." 

From  the  point  of  view  of  high  generalship  those  hold- 
ing attacks  had  served  their  purpose  pretty  well.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  mothers'  sons  they  had  been  a  bloody 
shambles  without  any  gain.  The  point  of  view  depends 
on  the  angle  of  vision. 

VII 

Let  me  now  tell  the  story  of  the  main  battle  of  Loos 
as  I  was  able  to  piece  it  together  from  the  accounts  of 
men  in  different  parts  of  the  field — no  man  could  see 
more  than  his  immediate  neighborhood — and  from  the 
officers  who  survived.  It  is  a  story  full  of  the  psychology 
of  battle,  with  many  strange  incidents  which  happened 
to  men  when  their  spirit  was  uplifted  by  that  mingling 
of  exultation  and  fear  which  is  heroism,  and  with  queer 
episodes  almost  verging  on  comedy  in  the  midst  of  death 
and  agony,  at  the  end  of  a  day  of  victory,  most  ghastly 
failure. 

The  three  attacking  divisions  from  left  to  right  on 
the  line  opposite  the  villages  of  Hulhich  and  Loos  were 
the  1st,  the  15th  (Scottish),  and  the  47th  (London). 
Higher  up,  opposite  Hulluch  and  Haisnes,  the  9th  (Scot- 
tish) Division  and  the  7th  Division  were  in  front  of  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  A   BATTLE  167 

Hohenzollern  redoubt  (chalky  earthworks  thrust  out 
beyond  the  German  front-Hne  trenches,  on  rising  ground) 
and  some  chalk-quarries. 

The  men  of  those  divisions  were  lined  up  during  the 
night  in  the  communication  trenches,  which  had  been 
dug  by  the  sappers  and  laid  with  miles  of  telephone  wire. 
They  were  silent,  except  for  the  chink  of  shovels  and  side- 
arms,  the  shuffle  of  men's  feet,  their  hard  breathing,  and 
occasional  words  of  command.  At  five-thirty,  when  the 
guns  in  all  our  batteries  were  firing  at  full  blast,  with  a 
constant  scream  of  shells  over  the  heads  of  the  waiting 
men,  and  when  the  first  faint  light  of  day  stole  into  the 
sky,  there  was  a  slight  rain  falling,  and  the  wind  blew 
lightly  from  the  southwest. 

In  the  front-line  trenches  a  number  of  men  were  busy 
with  some  long,  narrow  cyhnders,  which  had  been  carried 
up  a  day  before.  They  were  arranging  them  in  the  mud 
of  the  parapets  with  their  nozles  facing  the  enemy  lines. 

"That's  the  stuff  to  give  them!" 

"What  is  it?" 

"Poison-gas.     Worse  than  they  used  at  Ypres." 

"Christ!  .  .  .  supposing  we  have  to  walk  through  it?" 

"We  shall  walk  behind  it.  The  wind  will  carry  it  down 
the  throat  of  the  Fritzes.     We  shall  find  'em  dead." 

So  men  I  met  had  talked  of  that  new  weapon  which 
most  of  them  hated. 

It  was  at  five-thirty  when  the  men  busy  with  the  cylin- 
ders turned  on  little  taps.  There  was  a  faint  hissing 
noise,  the  escape  of  gas  from  many  pipes.  A  heavy, 
whitish  cloud  came  out  of  the  cylinders  and  traveled 
aboveground  as  it  was  hfted  and  carried  forward  by  the 
breeze. 

"How's  the  gas  working?"  asked  a  Scottish  officer. 

"Going  fine!"  said  an  English  officer.  But  he  looked 
anxious,  and  wetted  a  finger  and  held  it  up,  to  get  the 
direction  of  the  wind. 

Sorne  of  the  communication  trenches  were  crowded 
with  the  Black  Watch  of  the  ist  Division,  hard,  bronzed 


i68  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

fellows,  with  the  red  heckle  in  their  bonnets.  (It  was 
before  the  time  of  steel  hats.)  They  were  leaning  up 
against  the  walls  of  the  trenches,  waiting.  They  were 
strung  round  with  spades,  bombs,  and  sacks. 

"A  queer  kind  o'  stink!"  said  one  of  them,  sniffing. 

Some  of  the  men  began  coughing.  Others  were  rub- 
bing their  eyes,  as  though  they  smarted. 

The  poison-gas.  .  .  .  The  wind  had  carried  it  half  way 
across  No  Man's  Land,  then  a  swirl  changed  its  course, 
and  flicked  it  down  a  gully,  and  swept  it  right  round  to 
the  Black  Watch  in  the  narrow  trenches.  Some  German 
shell-fire  was  coming,  too.  In  one  small  bunch  eight  men 
fell  in  a  mush  of  blood  and  raw  flesh.  But  the  gas  was 
worse.  There  was  a  movement  in  the  trenches,  the  hud- 
dling together  of  frightened  men  who  had  been  very 
brave.  They  were  coughing,  spitting,  gasping.  Some  of 
them  fell  limp  against  their  fellows,  with  pallid  cheeks 
which  blackened.  Others  tied  handkerchiefs  about  their 
mouths  and  noses,  but  choked  inside  those  bandages,  and 
dropped  to  earth  with  a  clatter  of  shovels.  Officers  and 
men  were  cursing  and  groaning.  An  hour  later,  when 
the  whistles  blew,  there  were  gaps  in  the  line  of  the  ist 
Division  which  went  over  the  top.  In  the  trenches  lay 
gassed  men.  In  No  Man's  Land  others  fell,  sw-ept  by 
machine-gun  bullets,  shrapnel,  and  high  explosives.  The 
1st  Division  was  "checked."  .  .  . 

"We  caught  it  badly,"  said  some  of  them  I  met  later 
in  the  day,  bandaged  and  bloody,  and  plastered  in  wet 
chalk,  while  gassed  men  lay  on  stretchers  about  them, 
unconscious,  with  laboring  lungs. 


VIII 

Farther  south  the  front-lines  of  the  15th  (Scottish) 
Division  climbed  over  their  parapets  at  six-thirty,  and 
saw  the  open  ground  before  them,  and  the  dusky,  paling 
sky  above  them,  and  broken  wire  in  front  of  the  enemy's 
churned-up  trenches;    and  through  the  smoke,  faintly, 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  169 

and  far  away,  three  and  a  half  miles  away,  the  ghostly 
outline  of  the  "Tower  Bridge"  of  Loos,  which  was  their 
goal.  For  an  hour  there  were  steady  tides  of  men  all 
streaming  slowly  up  those  narrow  communication  ways, 
cut  through  the  chalk  to  get  into  the  light  also,  where 
death  was  in  ambush  for  many  of  them  somewhere  in  the 
shadows  of  that  dawn. 

By  seven-forty  the  two  assaulting  brigades  of  the  15th 
Division  had  left  the  trenches  and  were  in  the  open. 
Shriller  than  the  scream  of  shells  above  them  was  the 
skirl  of  pipes,  going  with  them.  The  Pipe  Major  of  the 
8th  Gordons  was  badly  wounded,  but  refused  to  be  touched 
until  the  other  men  were  tended.  He  was  a  giant,  too  big  for 
a  stretcher,  and  had  to  be  carried  back  on  a  tarpaulin.  At 
the  dressing-station  his  leg  was  amputated,  but  he  died 
after  two  operations,  and  the  Gordons  mourned  him. 

While  the  Highlanders  went  forward  with  their  pipes, 
two  brigades  of  the  Londoners,  on  their  right,  were  ad- 
vancing in  the  direction  of  the  long,  double  slag  heap, 
southwest  of  Loos,  called  the  Double  Grassier.  Some  of 
them  were  blowing  mouth-organs,  playing  the  music-hall 
song  of  *' Hullo,  hullo,  it's  a  different  girl  again!"  and 
the  "Robert  E.  Lee,"  until  one  after  another  a  musician 
fell  in  a  crumpled  heap.  Shrapnel  burst  over  them,  and 
here  and  there  shells  plowed  up  the  earth  where  they 
were  trudging.  On  the  right  of  the  Londoners  the  French 
still  stayed  in  their  trenches — their  own  attack  was  post- 
poned until  midday — ^and  they  cheered  the  London  men, 
as  they  went  forward,  v/ith  cries  of,  "  Vivent  les  Anglais!'" 
*'  J  mort — les  Bodies!"  It  was  they  who  saw  one  man 
kicking  a  football  in  advance  of  the  others. 

"He  is  mad!"  they  said.     "The  poor  boy  is  a  lunatic!" 

"He  is  not  mad,"  said  a  French  officer  who  had  lived 
in  England,  "It  is  a  beau  geste.  He  is  a  sportsman 
scornful  of  death.     That  is  the  British  sport." 

It  was  a  London  Irishman  dribbling  a  football  toward 
the  goal,  and  he  held  it  for  fourteen  hundred  yards — the 
best-kicked  goal  in  history. 


170  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Many  men  fell  in  the  five  hundred  yards  of  No  Man's 
Land.  But  they  were  not  missed  then  by  those  who  went 
on  in  waves — rather,  like  molecules,  separating,  collect- 
ing, splitting  up  into  smaller  groups,  bunching  together 
again,  on  the  way  to  the  first  line  of  German  trenches. 
A  glint  of  bayonets  made  a  quickset  hedge  along  the  line 
of  churned-up  earth  which  had  been  the  Germans'  front- 
line trench.  Our  guns  had  cut  the  wire  or  torn  gaps  into 
it.  Through  the  broken  strands  went  the  Londoners  on 
the  right,  the  Scots  on  the  left,  shouting  hoarsely  now. 
They  saw  red.  They  were  hunters  of  human  flesh. 
They  swarmed  down  into  the  first  long  ditch,  trampling 
over  dead  bodies,  falling  over  them,  clawing  the  earth 
and  scrambling  up  the  parados,  all  broken  and  crumbled, 
then  on  again  to  another  ditch.  Boys  dropped  with  bul- 
lets in  their  brains,  throats,  and  bodies.  German  ma- 
chine-guns were  at  work  at  close  range. 

"Give  'em  hell!"  said  an  officer  of  the  Londoners — a  boy 
of  nineteen.  There  were  a  lot  of  living  Germans  in  the 
second  ditch,  and  in  holes  about.  Some  of  them  stood 
still,  as  though  turned  to  clay,  until  they  fell  with  half 
the  length  of  a  bayonet  through  their  stomachs.  Others 
shrieked  and  ran  a  little  way  before  they  died.  Others 
sat  behind  hillocks  of  earth,  spraying  our  men  with  ma- 
chine-gun bullets  until  bombs  were  hurled  on  them  and 
they  were  scattered  into  lumps  of  flesh. 

Three  lines  of  trench  were  taken,  and  the  Londoners 
and  the  Scots  went  forward  again  in  a  spate  toward  Loos. 
All  the  way  from  our  old  lines  men  were  streaming  up, 
with  shells  bursting  among  them  or  near  them. 

On  the  way  to  Loos  a  company  of  Scots  came  face  to 
face  with  a  tall  German.  He  was  stone-dead,  with  a 
bullet  in  his  brain,  his  face  all  blackened  with  the  grime 
of  battle;  but  he  stood  erect  in  the  path,  wedged  somehow 
in  a  bit  of  trench.  The  Scots  stared  at  this  figure,  and 
their  line  parted  and  swept  each  side  of  him,  as  though 
some  obscene  specter  barred  the  way.  Rank  after  rank 
streamed  up,  and  then  a  big  tide  of  men  poured  through 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  171 

the  German  trench  systems  and  rushed  fonvard.  Three- 
quarters  of  a  mile  more  to  Loos.  Some  of  them  were 
panting,  out  of  breath,  speechless.  Others  talked  to  the 
men  about  them  in  stray  sentences.  Most  of  them  were 
silent,  staring  ahead  of  them  and  hcking  their  lips  with 
swollen  tongues.  They  were  parched  with  thirst,  some  of 
them  told  me.  Many  stopped  to  drink  the  last  drop  out  of 
their  water-bottles.  As  one  man  drank  he  spun  round 
and  fell  with  a  thud  on  his  face.  Machine-gun  bullets 
were  whipping  up  the  earth.  From  Loos  came  a  loud 
and  constant  rattle  of  machine-guns.  Machine-guns 
were  firing  out  of  the  broken  windows  of  the  houses  and 
from  the  top  of  the  "Tower  Bridge,"  those  steel  girders 
which  rose  three  hundred  feet  high  from  the  center  of 
the  village,  and  from  slit  trenches  across  the  narrow 
streets.  There  were  one  hundred  machine-guns  in  the 
cemetery  to  the  southwest  of  the  town,  pouring  out  lead 
upon  the  Londoners  who  had  to  pass  that  place. 

Scots  and  London  men  were  mixed  up,  and  mingled  in 
crowds  which  encircled  Loos,  and  forced  their  way  into 
the  village;  but  roughly  still,  and  in  the  mass,  they  were 
Scots  who  assaulted  Loos  itself,  and  London  men  who 
went  south  of  it  to  the  chalk-pits  and  the  Double  Grassier. 

It  was  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  when  the  first  crowds 
reached  the  village,  and  for  nearly  two  hours  afterward 
there  was  street-fighting. 

It  was  the  fighting  of  men  in  the  open,  armed  with  bay- 
onets, rifles,  and  bombs,  against  men  invisible  and  in 
hiding,  with  machine-guns.  Small  groups  of  Scots,  like 
packs  of  wolves,  prowled  around  the  houses,  where  the 
lower  rooms  and  cellars  were  crammed  with  Germans, 
trapped  and  terrified,  but  still  defending  themselves.  In 
some  of  the  houses  they  would  not  surrender,  afraid  of 
certain  death,  anyhow,  and  kept  the  Scots  at  bay  awhile 
until  those  kilted  men  flung  themselves  in  and  killed  their 
enemy  to  the  last  man.  Outside  those  red-brick  houses 
lay  dead  and  wounded  Scots.  Inside  there  were  the  curses 
and  screams  of  a  bloody  vengeance.     In  other  houses  the 


172  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

machine-gun  garrisons  ceased  fire  and  put  white  rags 
through  the  broken  windows,  and  surrendered  Hke  sheep. 
So  it  was  in  one  house  entered  by  a  httle  kilted  signaler, 
who  shot  down  three  men  who  tried  to  kill  him.  Thirty 
others  held  their  hands  up  and  said,  in  a  chorus  of  fear, 
**Kamerad!     Kameradl" 

A  company  of  the  8th  Gordons  were  among  the  first 
into  Loos,  led  by  some  of  those  Highland  officers  I  have 
mentioned  on  another  page.  It  was  ''Honest  John"  who 
led  one  crowd  of  them,  and  he  claims  now,  with  a  laugh, 
that  he  gained  his  Military  Cross  for  saving  the  lives  ot 
two  hundred  Germans.  "I  ought  to  have  got  the  Royal 
Humane  Society's  medal,"  he  said.  Those  Germans — 
Poles,  really,  from  Silesia — came  swarming  out  of  a  house 
with  their  hands  up.  But  the  Gordons  had  tasted  blood. 
They  were  hungry  for  it.  They  were  panting  and  shout- 
ing, with  red  bayonets,  behind  their  officer. 

That  young  man  thought  deeply  and  quickly.  If  there 
were  "no  quarter"  it  might  be  ugly  for  the  Gordons  later 
in  the  day,  and  the  day  was  young,  and  Loos  was  still 
untaken. 

He  stood  facing  his  own  men,  ordered  them  sternly  to 
keep  steady.  These  men  were  to  be  taken  prisoners  and 
sent  back  under  escort.  He  had  his  revolver  handy,  and, 
anyhow,  the  men  knew  him.  They  obeyed,  grumbling 
sullenly. 

There  was  the  noise  of  fire  in  other  parts  of  the  village, 
and  the  tap-tap-tap  of  machine-guns  from  many  cellars. 
Bombing-parties  of  Scots  silenced  those  machine-gunners 
at  last  by  going  to  the  head  of  the  stairways  and  flinging 
down  their  hand-grenades.  The  cellars  of  Loos  were  full 
of  dead. 

In  one  of  them,  hours  after  the  fighting  had  ceased 
among  the  ruins  of  the  village,  and  the  line  of  fire  was 
forward  of  Hill  70,  a  living  man  still  hid  and  carried  on 
his  work.  The  colonel  of  one  of  our  forward  battalions 
came  into  Loos  with  his  signalers  and  runners,  and  estab- 
lished his  headquarters  in  a  house  almost  untouched  by 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  173 

shell-fire.  At  the  time  there  was  very  little  shelling,  as 
the  artillery  officers  on  either  side  were  afraid  of  kiUing 
their  own  men,  and  the  house  seemed  fairly  safe  for  the 
purpose  of  a  temporary  signal-station. 

But  the  colonel  noticed  that  shortly  after  his  arrival 
heavy  shells  began  to  fall  very  close  and  the  Germans 
obviously  were  aiming  directly  for  this  building.  He 
ordered  the  cellars  to  be  searched,  and  three  Germans 
were  found.  It  was  only  after  he  had  been  in  the  house 
for  forty  minutes  that  in  a  deeper  cellar,  which  had  not 
been  seen  before,  the  discovery  was  made  of  a  German 
officer  who  was  telephoning  to  his  own  batteries  and 
directing  their  fire.  Suspecting  that  the  colonel  and  his 
companions  were  important  officers  directing  general 
operations,  he  had  caused  the  shells  to  fall  upon  the  house, 
knowing  that  a  lucky  shot  would  mean  his  own  death 
as  well  as  theirs. 

As  our  searchers  came  into  the  cellar,  he  rose  and  stood 
there,  waiting,  with  a  cold  dignity,  for  the  fate  which  he 
knew  would  come  to  him,  as  it  did.  He  was  a  very  brave 
man. 

Another  German  officer  remained  hiding  in  the  church, 
which  was  so  heavily  mined  that  it  would  have  blown 
half  the  village  into  dust  and  ashes  if  he  had  touched  off 
the  charges.  He  was  fumbling  at  the  job  when  our  men 
found  and  killed  him. 

In  the  southern  outskirts  of  Loos,  and  In  the  cemetery, 
the  Londoners  had  a  bloody  fight  among  the  tombstones, 
where  nests  of  German  machine-guns  had  been  built  into 
the  vaults.  New  corpses,  still  bleeding,  lay  among  old 
dead  torn  from  their  coffins  by  shell-fire.  Londoners  and 
Silesian  Germans  lay  together  across  one  another's  bodies. 
The  London  men  routed  out  most  of  the  machine-gunners 
and  bayoneted  some  and  took  prisoners  of  others.  They 
were  not  so  fierce  as  the  Scots,  but  in  those  hours  forgot 
the  flower-gardens  in  Streatham  and  Tooting  Bee  and  the 
manners  of  suburban  drawing-rooms.  ...  It  is  strange 
that  one  German  machine-gun,  served  by  four  men,  re- 


174  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

mained  hidden  behind  a  gravestone  ail  through  that  day, 
and  Saturday,  and  Sunday,  and  sniped  stray  men  of  ours 
until  routed  at  last  by  moppers-up  of  the  Guards  brigade. 

As  the  Londoners  came  down  the  slope  to  the  southern 
edge  of  Loos  village,  through  a  thick  haze  of  smoke  from 
shell-fire  and  burning  houses,  they  were  astounded  to 
meet  a  crowd  of  civilians,  mostly  women  and  children, 
who  came  streaming  across  the  open  in  panic-stricken 
groups.  Some  of  them  fell  under  machine-gun  fire  snap- 
ping from  the  houses  or  under  shrapnel  bursting  over- 
head. The  women  were  haggard  and  gaunt,  with  wild 
eyes  and  wild  hair,  like  witches.  They  held  their  children 
in  tight  claws  until  they  were  near  our  soldiers,  when 
they  all  set  up  a  shrill  crying  and  wailing.  The  children 
were  dazed  with  terror.  Other  civilians  crawled  up  from 
their  cellars  in  Loos,  spattered  with  German  blood,  and 
wandered  about  among  soldiers  of  many  British  battalions  . 
who  crowded  amid  the  scarred  and  shattered  houses,  and 
among  the  wounded  men  who  came  staggering  through 
the  streets,  where  army  doctors  were  giving  first  aid  in 
the  roadway,  while  shells  were  bursting  overhead  and  all 
the  roar  of  the  battle  filled  the  air  for  miles  around  with 
infernal  tumult. 

Isolated  Germans  still  kept  sniping  from  secret  places, 
and  some  of  them  fired  at  a  dressing-station  in  the  market- 
place, until  a  French  girl,  afterward  decorated  for  valor — ■ 
she  was  called  the  Lady  of  Loos  by  Londoners  and  Scots 
— borrowed  a  revolver  and  shot  two  of  them  dead  in  a 
neighboring  house.  Then  she  came  back  to  the  soup  she 
was  making  for  wounded  men. 

Some  of  the  German  prisoners  were  impressed  as 
stretcher-bearers,  and  one,"  Jock,  "  had  compelled  four 
Germans  to  carry  him  in,  while  he  lay  talking  to  them  in 
broadest  Scots,  grinning  despite  his  blood  and  wounds. 

A  London  lieutenant  called  out  to  a  stretcher-bearer 
helping  to  carry  down  a  German  officer,  and  was  astounded 
to  be  greeted  by  the  wounded  man. 

"Hullo,  Leslie!  ...  I  knew  we  should  meet  one  day." 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  175 

Looking  at  the  man's  face,  the  Londoner  saw  it  was  his 
own  cousin.  .  .  .  There  was  all  the  drama  of  war  in  that 
dirty  village  of  Loos,  which  reeked  with  the  smell  of  death 
then,  and  years  later,  when  I  went  walking  through  it 
on  another  day  of  war,  after  another  battle  on  Hill  70, 
beyond. 

IX 

While  the  village  of  Loos  was  crowded  with  hunters  of 
men,  wounded,  dead,  batches  of  panic-stricken  prisoners, 
women,  doctors,  Highlanders  and  Lowlanders  "fey"  with 
the  intoxication  of  blood,  London  soldiers  with  tattered 
uniforms  and  muddy  rifles  and  stained  bayonets,  mixed 
brigades  were  moving  forward  to  new  objectives.  The 
orders  of  the  Scottish  troops,  which  I  saw,  were  to  go  "all 
out,"  and  to  press  on  as  far  as  they  could,  with  the  abso- 
lute assurance  that  all  the  ground  they  gained  would  be 
held  behind  them  by  supporting  troops;  and  having  that 
promise,  they  trudged  on  to  Hill  70.  The  Londoners 
had  been  ordered  to  make  a  defensive  flank  on  the  right 
of  the  Scots  by  capturing  the  chalk-pit  south  of  Loos 
and  digging  in.  They  did  this  after  savage  fighting  in 
the  pit,  where  they  bayoneted  many  Germans,  though 
raked  by  machine-gun  bullets  from  a  neighboring  copse, 
which  was  a  fringe  of  gashed  and  tattered  trees.  But 
some  of  the  London  boys  were  mixed  up  with  the  advanc- 
ing Scots  and  went  on  with  them,  and  a  battalion  of  Scots 
Fusiliers  who  had  been  in  the  supporting  brigade  of  the 
15th  Division,  which  was  intended  to  follow  the  advance, 
joined  the  first  assault,  either  through  eagerness  or  a 
wrong  order,  and,  unknown  to  their  brigadier,  were  among 
the  leaders  in  the  bloody  struggle  in  Loos,  and  labored 
on  to  Hill  70,  where  Camerons,  Gordons,  Black  Watch, 
Seaforths,  Argyll,  and  Sutherland  men  and  Londoners 
were  now  up  the  slopes,  stabbing  stray  Germans  who  were 
trying  to  retreat  to  a  redoubt  on  the  reverse  side  of  the 
hill. 

For  a  time  there  was  a  kind  of  Bank  Holiday  crowd  on 


176  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

Hili  70.  The  German  gunners,  knowing  that  the  redoubt 
on  the  crest  was  still  held  by  their  men,  dared  not  fire; 
and  many  German  batteries  were  on  the  move,  out  of 
Lens  and  from  their  secret  lairs  in  the  country  there- 
abouts, in  a  state  of  panic.  On  our  right  the  French  were 
fighting  desperately  at  Souchez  and  Neuville  St.-Vaast 
and  up  the  lower  slopes  of  Vimy,  suffering  horrible  cas- 
ualties and  failing  to  gain  the  heights  in  spite  of  the  reck- 
less valor  of  their  men,  but  alarming  the  German  staffs, 
who  for  a  time  had  lost  touch  with  the  situation — their 
telephones  had  been  destroyed  by  gun-fire — and  were 
filled  with  gloomy  apprehensions.  So  Hill  70  was  quiet, 
except  for  spasms  of  machine-gun  fire  from  the  redoubt 
on  the  German  side  of  the  slope  and  the  bombing  of 
German  dugouts,  or  the  bayoneting  of  single  men  routed 
out  from  holes  in  the  earth. 

One  of  our  men  came  face  to  face  with  four  Germans, 
two  of  whom  were  armed  with  rifles  and  two  with  bombs. 
They  were  standing  in  the  wreckage  of  a  trench,  pallid, 
and  with  the  fear  of  death  in  their  eyes.  The  rifles  clat- 
tered to  the  earth,  the  bombs  fell  at  their  feet,  and  their 
hands  went  up  when  the  young  Scot  appeared  before  them 
with  his  bayonet  dowm.  He  was  alone,  and  they  could 
have  killed  him,  but  surrendered,  and  were  glad  of  the 
life  he  granted  them.  As  more  men  came  up  the  slope 
there  were  greetings  between  comrades,  of: 

"Hullo,  Jock!" 

"Is  that  you,  Alf?" 

They  were  rummaging  about  for  souvenirs  in  half- 
destroyed  dugouts  where  dead  bodies  lay.  They  were 
"swapping"  souvenirs — taken  from  prisoners — silver 
watches,  tobacco-boxes,  revolvers,  compasses.  Many  of 
them  put  on  German  field-caps,  like  schoolboys  with 
paper  caps  from  Christmas  crackers,  shouting  with  laugh- 
ter because  of  their  German  look.  They  thought  the 
battle  was  won.  After  the  first  wild  rush  the  shell-fire, 
the  killing,  the  sight  of  dead  comrades,  the  smell  of  blood, 
the  nightmare  of  that  hour  after  dawn,  they  were  begin- 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  177 

ning  to  get  normal  again,  to  be  conscious  of  themselves, 
to  rejoice  in  their  luck  at  having  got  so  far  with  whole 
skins.  It  had  been  a  fine  victory.  The  enemy  was  no- 
where.    He  had  "mizzled  off." 

Some  of  the  Scots,  with  the  hunter's  instinct  still 
strong,  decided  to  go  on  still  farther  to  a  new  objective. 
They  straggled  away  in  batches  to  one  of  the  suburbs  of 
Lens — the  Cite  St.-Auguste.  Very  few  of  them  came 
back  with  the  tale  of  their  comrades'  slaughter  by  sudden 
bursts  of  machine-gun  fire  which  cut  off  all  chance  of 
retreat.  .  .  . 

The  quietude  of  Hill  70  was  broken  by  the  beginning 
of  a  new  bombardment  from  German  guns. 

'*Dig  in,"  said  the  officers.  "We  must  hold  on  at  all 
costs  until  the  supports  come  up." 

Where  were  the  supporting  troops  which  had  been 
promised.?  There  was  no  sign  of  them  coming  forward 
from  Loos.  The  Scots  were  strangely  isolated  on  the 
slopes  of  Hill  70.  At  night  the  sky  above  them  was  lit 
up  by  the  red  glow  of  fires  in  Lens,  and  at  twelve-thirty 
that  night,  under  that  ruddy  sky,  dark  figures  moved  on 
the  east  of  the  hill  and  a  storm  of  machine-gun  bullets 
swept  down  on  the  Highlanders  and  Lowlanders,  who 
crouched  low  in  the  mangled  earth.  It  was  a  counter- 
attack by  masses  of  men  crawling  up  to  the  crest  from 
the  reverse  side  and  trying  to  get  the  Scots  out  of  the 
slopes  below.  But  the  men  of  the  15th  Division  an- 
swered by  volleys  of  rifle-fire,  machine-gun  fire,  and 
bombs.  They  held  on  in  spite  of  dead  and  wounded 
men  thinning  out  their  fighting  strength.  At  five-thirty 
in  the  morning  there  was  another  strong  counter-attack, 
repulsed  also,  but  at  another  price  of  Hfe  in  those  holes 
and  ditches  on  the  hillside. 

Scottish  officers  stared  anxiously  back  toward  their  old 
lines.  Where  were  the  supports?  Why  did  they  get  no 
help?  Why  were  they  left  cHnging  like  this  to  an  isolated 
hill?  The  German  artillery  had  reorganized.  They  were 
barraging  the  ground  about  Loos  fiercely  and  continu- 


lyS  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ously.  They  were  covering  a  great  stretch  of  country 
up  to  HuUuch,  and  north  of  it,  with  intense  harassing  fire. 
Later  on  that  Saturday  morning  the  15th  Division  re- 
ceived orders  to  attack  and  capture  the  German  earth- 
w^ork  redoubt  on  the  crest  of  the  hiU.  A  brigade  of  the 
2ist  Division  was  nominally  in  support  of  them,  but  only 
small  groups  of  that  brigade  appeared  on  the  scene,  a 
few  white-faced  officers,  savage  with  anger,  almost  mad 
with  some  despair  in  them,  with  batches  of  English  lads 
who  looked  famished  with  hunger,  weak  after  long  march- 
ing, demoralized  by  some  tragedy  that  had  happened  to 
them.  They  were  Scots  who  did  most  of  the  work  in 
trying  to  capture  the  redoubt,  the  same  Scots  who  had 
fought  through  Loos.  They  tried  to  reach  the  crest. 
Again  and  again  they  crawled  forward  and  up,  but  the 
blasts  of  machine-gun  fire  mowed  them  down,  and  many 
young  Scots  lay  motionless  on  those  chalky  slopes,  with 
their  kilts  riddled  with  bullets.  Others,  hit  in  the  head, 
or  arms,  or  legs,  writhed  hke  snakes  back  to  the  cover  of 
broken  trenches. 

"Where  are  the  supports?"  asked  the  Scottish  officers. 
"In  God's  name,  where  are  the  troops  who  were  to  follow 
on.''  Why  did  we  do  all  this  bloody  fighting  to  be  hung 
up  in  the  air  like  this.f"' 

The  answer  to  their  question  has  not  been  given  in  any 
official  despatch.  It  is  answered  by  the  tragedy  of  the 
2ist  and  24th  Divisions,  who  will  never  forget  the  misery 
of  that  day,  though  not  many  are  now  aUve  who  suff'ered 
it.     Their  part  of  the  battle  I  will  tell  later. 


To  onlookers  there  were  some  of  the  signs  of  victory  on 
that  day  of  September  25th — of  victory  and  its  price.  I 
met  great  numbers  of  the  lightly  wounded  men,  mostly 
"Jocks,"  and  they  were  in  exalted  spirits  because  they 
had  done  well  in  this  ordeal  and  had  come  through  it, 
and  out  of  it — alive.     They  came  straggling  back  through 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  179 

the  villages  behind  the  lines  to  the  casualty  clearing- 
stations  and  ambulance-trains.  Some  of  them  had  the 
sleeves  of  their  tunics  cut  away  and  showed  brown, 
brawny  arms  tightly  bandaged  and  smeared  with  blood. 
Some  of  them  were  wounded  in  the  legs  and  hobbled  with 
their  arms  about  their  comrades'  necks.  Their  kilts  were 
torn  and  plastered  with  chalky  mud.  Nearly  all  of  them 
had  some  "souvenir"  of  the  fighting — German  watches, 
caps,  cartridges.  They  carried  themselves  with  a  warrior 
look,  so  hard,  so  lean,  so  clear-eyed,  these  young  Scots  of 
the  Black  Watch  and  Camerons  and  Gordons.  They 
told  tales  of  their  own  adventure  in  broad  Scots,  hard  to 
understand,  and  laughed  grimly  at  the  killing  they  had 
done,  though  here  and  there  a  lad  among  them  had  a 
look  of  bad  remembrance  in  his  eyes,  and  older  men  spoke 
gravely  of  the  scenes  on  the  battlefield  and  called  it 
•'hellish."  But  their  pride  was  high.  They  had  done 
what  they  had  been  asked  to  do.  The  15th  Division  had 
proved  its  quality.  Their  old  battalions,  famous  in  his- 
tory, had  gained  new  honor. 

Thousands  of  those  lightly  wounded  men  swarmed 
about  a  long  ambulance-train  standing  in  a  field  near  the 
village  of  Choques.  They  crowded  the  carriages,  leaned 
out  of  the  windows  with  their  bandaged  heads  and  arms, 
shouting  at  friends  they  saw  in  the  other  crowds.  The 
spirit  of  victory,  and  of  lucky  escape,  uplifted  those  lads, 
drugged  them.  And  now  they  were  going  home  for  a 
spell.  Home  to  bonny  Scotland,  with  a  wound  that 
would  take  some  time  to  heal. 

There  were  other  wounded  men  from  whom  no  laughter 
came,  nor  any  sound.  They  were  carried  to  the  train  on 
stretchers,  laid  down  awhile  on  the  wooden  platforms, 
covered  with  blankets  up  to  their  chins — unless  they  un- 
covered themselves  with  convulsive  movements.  I  saw 
one  young  Londoner  so  smashed  about  the  face  that  only 
his  eyes  were  uncovered  between  layers  of  bandages,  and 
they  were  glazed  with  the  first  film  of  death.  Another 
had  his  jaw  blown  clean  away,  so  the  doctor  told  me,  and 


i8o  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  upper  half  of  his  face  was  livid  and  discolored  by  ex- 
plosive gases.  A  splendid  boy  of  the  Black  Watch  was 
but  a  living  trunk.  Both  his  arms  and  both  his  legs  were 
shattered.  If  he  lived  after  butcher's  work  of  surgery  he 
would  be  one  of  those  who  go  about  in  boxes  on  wheels, 
from  whom  men  turn  their  eyes  away,  sick  with  a  sense 
of  horror.  There  were  blind  boys  led  to  the  train  by 
wounded  comrades,  groping,  very  quiet,  thinking  of  a 
life  of  darkness  ahead  of  them — forever  in  the  darkness 
which  shut  in  their  souls.  For  days  and  weeks  that  fol- 
lowed there  was  always  a  procession  of  ambulances  on 
the  way  to  the  dirty  little  town  of  Lillers,  and  going  along 
the  roads  I  used  to  look  back  at  them  and  see  the  soles 
of  muddy  boots  upturned  below  brown  blankets.  It  was 
more  human  wreckage  coming  down  from  the  salient  of 
Loos,  from  the  chalk-pits  of  Hulluch  and  the  tumbled 
earth  of  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt,  which  had  been  partly 
gained  by  the  battle  which  did  not  succeed.  Outside  a 
square  brick  building,  which  was  the  Town  Hall  of  Lillers, 
and  for  a  time  a  casualty  clearing-station,  the  "bad" 
cases  were  unloaded;  men  with  chunks  of  steel  in  their 
lungs  and  bowels  were  vomiting  great  gobs  of  blood,  men 
with  arms  and  legs  torn  from  their  trunks,  men  without 
noses,  and  their  brains  throbbing  through  opened  scalps, 
men  without  faces.  .  .  . 

XI 

To  a  field  behind  the  railway  station  near  the  grimy 
village  of  Choques,  on  the  edge  of  this  Black  Country  of 
France,  the  prisoners  were  brought;  and  I  went  among 
them  and  talked  with  some  of  them,  on  a  Sunday  morning, 
when  now  the  rain  had  stopped  and  there  was  a  blue  sky 
overhead  and  good  visibility  for  German  guns  and  ours. 

There  were  fourteen  hundred  German  prisoners  await- 
ing entrainment,  a  mass  of  slate-gray  men  lying  on  the  wet 
earth  in  huddled  heaps  of  misery,  while  a  few  of  our 
fresh-faced  Tommies  stood  among  them  with  fixed  bay- 
onets.    They  were  the  men  who  had  surrendered  from 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  i8i 

deep  dugouts  in  the  trenches  between  us  and  Loos  and 
from  the  cellars  of  Loos  itself.  They  had  seen  many  of 
their  comrades  bayoneted.  Some  of  them  had  shrieked 
for  mercy.  Others  had  not  shrieked,  having  no  power  of 
sound  in  their  throats,  but  had  shrunk  back  at  the  sight 
of  glinting  bayonets,  with  an  animal  fear  of  death.  Now, 
all  that  was  a  nightmare  memory,  and  they  were  out  of  it 
all  until  the  war  should  end,  next  year,  the  year  after, 
the  year  after  that — who  could  tell.^ 

They  had  been  soaked  to  the  skin  in  the  night  and  their 
gray  uniforms  were  still  soddened.  Many  of  them  were 
sleeping,  in  huddled,  grotesque  postures,  like  dead  men, 
some  lying  on  their  stomachs,  face  downward.  Others 
were  awake,  sitting  hunched  up,  with  drooping  heads 
and  a  beaten,  exhausted  look.  Others  paced  up  and 
down,  up  and  down,  like  caged  animals,  as  they  were, 
famished  and  parched,  until  we  could  distribute  the  ra- 
tions. Many  of  them  were  dying,  and  a  German  ambu- 
lance-man went  among  them,  injecting  them  with  mor- 
phine to  ease  the  agony  which  made  them  writhe  and 
groan.  Two  men  held  their  stomachs,  moaning  and  whim- 
pering with  a  pain  that  gnawed  their  bowels,  caused  by 
cold  and  damp.  They  cried  out  to  me,  asking  for  a  doc- 
tor. A  friend  of  mine  carried  a  water-jar  to  some  of  the 
wounded  and  held  it  to  their  lips.  One  of  them  refused. 
He  was  a  tall,  evil-looking  fellow,  with  a  bloody  rag  round 
his  head — a  typical  "Hun,"  I  thought.  But  he  pointed 
to  a  comrade  who  lay  gasping  beside  him  and  said,  in 
German,  "He  needs  it  first."  This  man  had  never  heard 
of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  at  Zutphen,  when  thirsty  and 
near  death,  said,  "His  need  is  greater  than  mine,"  but  he 
had  the  same  chivalry  in  his  soul. 

The  officer  in  charge  of  their  escort  could  not  speak 
German  and  had  no  means  of  explaining  to  the  prisoners 
that  they  were  to  take  their  turn  to  get  rations  and  water 
at  a  dump  nearby.  It  was  a  war  correspondent — young 
Valentine  Wilhams,  afterward  a  very  gallant  officer  in 
the  Irish  Guards — who  gave  the  orders  in  fluent  and  in- 


1 82  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

cisive  German.  He  began  with  a  hoarse  shout  of  "Jch- 
iung!"  and  that  old  word  of  command  had  an  electrical 
effect  on  many  of  the  men.  Even  those  who  had  seemed 
asleep  staggered  to  their  feet  and  stood  at  attention. 
The  habit  of  discipline  was  part  of  their  very  life,  and 
men  almost  dead  strove  to  obey. 

The  non-commissioned  officers  formed  parties  to  draw 
and  distribute  the  rations,  and  then  those  prisoners 
clutched  at  hunks  of  bread  and  ate  in  a  famished  way, 
like  starved  beasts.  Some  of  them  had  been  four  days 
hungry,  cut  off  from  their  supplies  by  our  barrage  fire, 
and  intense  hunger  gave  them  a  kind  of  vitality  when 
food  appeared.  The  sight  of  that  mass  of  men  reduced 
to  such  depths  of  human  misery  was  horrible.  One  had 
no  hate  in  one's  heart  for  them  then. 

"Poor  devils!"  said  an  officer  with  me.     "Poor  beasts! 
. .  .  Here  we  see  the  'glory'  of  war!  the  'romance'  of  war!" 
I  spoke  to  some  of  them  in  bad  German,  and  understood 
their  answer. 

"It  is  better  here  than  on  the  battlefield,"  said  one  of 
them.     "We  are  glad  to  be  prisoners." 

One  of  them  waved  his  hand  toward  the  tumult  of  guns 
which  were  firing  ceaselessly. 

"I  pity  our  poor  people  there,"  he  said. 
One  of  them,  who  spoke  English,  described  all  he  had 
seen  of  the  battle,  which  was  not  much,  because  no  man 
at  such  a  time  sees  more  than  what  happens  within  a 
yard  or  two, 

"The  English  caught  us  by  surprise  when  the  attack 
came  at  last,"  he  said.  "The  bombardment  had  been 
going  on  for  days,  and  we  could  not  guess  when  the 
attack  would  begin.  I  was  in  a  deep  dugout,  wondering 
how  long  it  would  be  before  a  shell  came  through  the  roof 
and  blow  us  to  pieces.  The  earth  shook  above  our  heads. 
Wounded  men  crawled  into  the  dugout,  and  some  of  them 
died  down  there.  We  sat  looking  at  their  bodies  in  the 
doorway  and  up  the  steps.  I  climbed  over  them  when  a 
lull  came.     A   friend   of  mine  was  there,   dead,   and   I 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  183 

stepped  on  his  stomach  to  get  upstairs.  The  first  thing 
I  saw  was  a  crowd  of  your  soldiers  streaming  past  our 
trenches.  We  were  surrounded  on  three  sides,  and  our 
position  was  hopeless.  Some  of  our  men  started  firing, 
but  it  was  only  asking  for  death.  Your  men  killed  them 
with  bayonets.  I  went  back  into  my  dugout  and  waited. 
Presently  there  w^as  an  explosion  in  the  doorway  and  part 
of  the  dugout  fell  in.  One  of  the  men  with  me  had  his 
head  blown  off,  and  his  blood  spurted  on  me.  I  was 
dazed,  but  through  the  fumes  I  saw  an  English  soldier 
in  a  petticoat  standing  at  the  doorway,  making  ready  to 
throw  another  bomb. 

"I  shouted  to  him  in  English: 

**  *  Don't  kill  us !     We  surrender ! ' 

*'He  was  silent  for  a  second  or  two,  and  I  thought  he 
would  throw  his  bomb.     Then  he  said: 

"'Come  out,  you  swine.' 

**So  we  went  out,  and  saw  many  soldiers  in  petticoats, 
your  Highlanders,  with  bayonets.  They  wanted  to  kill 
us,  but  one  man  argued  with  them  in  words  I  could  not 
understand — a  dialect — and  we  were  told  to  go  along  a 
trench.  Even  then  we  expected  death,  but  came  to  an- 
other group  of  prisoners,  and  joined  them  on  their  way 
back.     Gott  sei  dank!" 

He  spoke  gravely  and  simply,  this  dirty,  bearded  man, 
who  had  been  a  clerk  in  a  London  office.  He  had  the 
truthfulness  of  a  man  who  had  just  come  from  great  horrors. 

Many  of  the  men  around  him  were  Silesians — more 
Polish  than  German.  Some  of  them  could  not  speak 
more  than  a  few  words  of  German,  and  were  true  Slavs  in 
physical  type,  with  flat  cheek-bones. 

A  group  of  German  artillery  officers  had  been  captured 
and  they  were  behaving  with  studied  arrogance  and  in- 
solence as  they  smoked  cigarettes  apart  from  the  men, 
and  looked  in  a  jeering  way  at  our  officers. 

'*Did  you  get  any  of  our  gas  this  morning?"  I  asked 
them,  and  one  of  them  laughed  and  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"I  smelled  it  a  little.     It  was  rather  nice.  .  .  .  The  Eng- 


184  NOW  IT  CAN  BK  TOLD 

lish  always  imitate  the  German  war-methods,  but  with- 
out much  success." 

They  grinned  and  imitated  my  way  of  saying  '^Gutcn 
Tag"  when  I  left  them.  It  took  a  year  or  more  to  tame 
the  arrogance  of  the  German  officer.  At  the  end  of  the 
Somme  battles  he  changed  his  manner  when  captured, 
and  was  very  polite. 

In  another  place — a  prison  in  St.-Omer — I  had  a  con- 
versation with  two  other  officers  of  the  German  army  who 
vv'ere  more  courteous  than  the  gunners.  They  had  been 
taken  at  Hooge  and  were  both  Prussians — one  a  stout 
captain,  smihng  behind  horn  spectacles,  with  a  false, 
jovial  manner,  hiding  the  effect  of  the  ordeal  from  which 
he  had  just  escaped,  and  his  hatred  of  us;  the  other  a 
young,  slim  fellov/,  with  clear-cut  features,  who  was  very 
nervous,  but  bowed  repeatedly,  with  his  heels  together, 
as  though  in  a  cafe  at  Ehrenbreitstein,  when  high  officers 
came  in.  A  few  hours  before  he  had  been  buried  alive. 
One  of  our  mines  had  exploded  under  him,  flinging  a 
heap  of  earth  over  him.  The  fat  man  by  his  side — his 
captain — had  been  buried,  too,  in  the  dugout.  They  had 
scraped  themselves  out  by  clawing  at  the  earth. 

They  were  cautious  about  answering  questions  on  the 
war,  but  the  younger  man  said  they  were  prepared  down 
to  the  last  gaiter  for  another  winter  campaign  and — that 
seemed  to  me  at  the  time  a  fine  touch  of  audacity — for 
two  more  winter  campaigns  if  need  be.  The  winter  of 
'i6,  after  this  autumn  and  winter  of  '15,  and  then  after 
that  the  winter  of '17!  The  words  of  that  young  Prussian 
seemed  to  me,  the  more  I  thought  of  them,  idiotic  and 
almost  insane.  Why,  the  world  itself  could  not  suffer 
two  more  years  of  war.  It  would  end  before  then  in 
general  anarchy,  the  wild  revolutions  of  armies  on  all 
fronts.  Humanity  of  every  nation  would  revolt  against 
such  prolonged  slaughter.  ...  It  was  I  who  was  mad,  in 
the  foolish  faith  that  the  war  would  end  before  another 
year  had  passed,  because  I  thought  that  would  be  the 
limit  of  endurance  of  such  mutual  massacre. 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  185 

In  a  room  next  to  those  two  officers — a  week  before  this 
battle,  the  captain  had  been  rowing  with  his  wife  on  the 
lake  at  Potsdam — was  another  prisoner,  who  wept  and 
wept.  He  had  escaped  to  our  lines  before  the  battle  to 
save  his  skin,  and  now  was  conscience-stricken  and 
thought  he  had  lost  his  soul.  What  stabbed  his  con- 
science most  was  the  thought  that  his  wife  and  children 
would  lose  their  allowances  because  of  his  treachery. 
He  stared  at  us  with  wild,  red  eyes. 

^'Ach,  me  in  armes  P/eih!  Meine  Kinder! ...  Ach,  Gott 
in  Himmeir' 

He  had  no  pride,  no  dignity,  no  courage. 

This  tall,  bearded  man,  father  of  a  family,  put  his 
hands  against  the  wall  and  laid  his  head  on  his  arm  and 
wept. 

XII 

During  the  battle,  for  several  days  I  went  with  other 
men  to  various  points  of  view,  trying  to  see  something  of 
the  human  conflict  from  slag  heaps  and  rising  ground,  but 
could  only  see  the  swirl  and  flurry  of  gun-fire  and  the 
smoke  of  shells  mixing  with  wet  mist,  and  the  backwash 
of  wounded  and  prisoners,  and  the  traffic  of  guns,  and 
wagons,  and  supporting  troops.  Like  an  ant  on  the  edge 
of  a  volcano  I  sat  among  the  slag  heaps  with  gunner 
observers,  who  were  listening  at  telephones  dumped  down 
in  the  fields  and  connected  with  artillery  brigades  and 
field  batteries. 

"The  Guards  are  fighting  round  Fosse  8,"  said  one  of 
these  observers. 

Through  the  mist  I  could  see  Fosse  8,  a  flat-topped  hill 
of  coal-dust.  Little  glinting  lights  were  playing  about  it, 
like  confetti  shining  in  the  sun.  That  was  German 
shrapnel.  Eruptions  of  red  flame  and  black  earth  vom- 
ited out  of  the  hill.  That  was  German  high  explosive. 
For  a  time  on  Monday,  September  27th,  it  was  the  storm- 
center  of  battle. 

''What's  that?"  asked  an  artillery  staff'-officer,  with  his 


1 86  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ear  to  the  field  telephone.  "What's  that?  .  .  .  Hullo! 
.  .  .  Are  you  there?  .  .  .  The  Guards  have  been  kicked  off 
Fosses Oh,  hell!" 

From  all  parts  of  the  field  of  battle  such  whispers  came 
to  listening  men  and  were  passed  on  to  headquarters, 
where  other  men  listened.  This  brigade  was  doing  pretty 
well.  That  was  hard  pressed.  The  Germans  were  coun- 
ter-attacking heavily.  Their  barrage  was  strong  and 
our  casualties  heavy.  "Oh,  hell!"  said  other  men.  From 
behind  the  mist  came  the  news  of  life  and  death,  reveal- 
ing things  which  no  onlooker  could  see. 

I  went  closer  to  see — into  the  center  of  the  arc  of  battle, 
up  by  the  Loos  redoubt,  where  the  German  dead  and  ours 
still  lay  in  heaps.  John  Buchan  was  my  companion  on 
that  walk,  and  together  we  stood  staring  over  the  edge  of 
a  trench  to  where,  grim  and  gaunt  against  the  gray  sky, 
loomed  the  high,  steel  columns  of  the  "Tower  Bridge," 
the  mining-works  which  I  had  seen  before  the  battle  as 
an  inaccessible  landmark  in  the  German  lines.  Now  they 
were  within  our  lines  in  the  center  of  Loos,  and  no  longer 
"leering"  at  us,  as  an  officer  once  told  me  they  used  to 
do  when  he  led  his  men  into  communication  trenches 
under  their  observation. 

Behind  us  now  was  the  turmoil  of  war — thousands  and 
scores  of  thousands  of  men  moving  in  steady  columns 
forward  and  backward  in  the  queer,  tangled  way  which 
during  a  great  battle  seems  to  have  no  purpose  or  meaning, 
except  to  the  directing  brains  on  the  Headquarters  Staff, 
and,  sometimes  in  history,  none  to  them. 

Vast  convoys  of  transports  choked  the  roads,  with  teams 
of  mules  harnessed  to  wagons  and  gun-limbers,  with  trains 
of  motor  ambulances  packed  with  wounded  men,  with 
infantry  brigades  plodding  through  the  slush  and  slime, 
with  divisional  cavalry  halted  in  the  villages,  and  great 
bivouacs  in  the  boggy  fields. 

The  men,  Londoners,  and  Scots,  and  Guards,  and  York- 
shires, and  Leinsters,  passed  and  repassed  in  dense  masses, 
in  small  battalions,  in  scattered  groups.     One  could  tell 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  187 

them  from  those  who  were  filHng  their  places  by  the  white 
chalk  which  covered  them  from  head  to  foot,  and  some- 
times by  the  blood  which  had  splashed  them. 

Regiments  which  had  lost  many  of  their  comrades  and 
had  fought  in  attack  and  counter-attack  through  those 
days  and  nights  went  very  silently,  and  no  man  cheered 
them.  Legions  of  tall  lads,  who  a  few  months  before 
marched  smart  and  trim  down  English  lanes,  trudged 
toward  the  fighting-lines  under  the  burden  of  their  heavy 
packs,  with  all  their  smartness  befouled  by  the  business 
of  war,  but  wonderful  and  pitiful  to  see  because  of  the 
look  of  courage  and  the  gravity  in  their  eyes  as  they  went 
up  to  dreadful  places.  Farther  away  within  the  zone  of 
the  enemy's  fire  the  traffic  ceased,  and  I  came  into  the 
desolate  lands  of  death,  where  there  is  but  little  movement, 
and  the  only  noise  is  that  of  guns.  I  passed  by  ruined 
villages  and  towns. 

To  the  left  was  Vermelles  (two  months  before  death 
nearly  caught  me  there),  and  I  stared  at  those  broken 
houses  and  roofless  farms  and  fallen  churches  which  used 
to  make  one's  soul  shiver  even  when  they  stood  clear  in 
the  daylight. 

To  the  right,  a  few  hundred  yards  away,  was  Masin- 
garbe,  from  which  many  of  our  troops  marched  out  to 
begin  the  great  attack.  Farther  back  were  the  great 
slag  heaps  of  Noeux-les-Mines,  and  all  around  other 
black  hills  of  this  mining  country  which  rise  out  of  the 
flat  plain.  It  was  a  long  walk  through  narrow  trenches 
toward  that  Loos  redoubt  where  at  last  I  stood.  There 
was  the  smell  of  death  in  those  narrow,  winding  ways. 
One  boy,  whom  death  had  taken  almost  at  the  entrance- 
way,  knelt  on  the  fire-step,  with  his  head  bent  and  his 
forehead  against  the  wet  clay,  as  though  in  prayer. 
Farther  on  other  bodies  of  London  boys  and  Scots  lay 
huddled  up. 

We  were  in  the  center  of  a  wide  field  of  fire,  with  the 
enemy's  batteries  on  one  side  and  ours  on  the  other  in 
sweeping  semicircles.     The  shells  of  all  these  batteries 


i88  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

went  crying  through  the  air  with  high,  whining  sighs, 
which  ended  in  the  cough  of  death.  The  roar  of  the  guns 
was  incessant  and  very  close.  The  enemy  was  sweeping 
a  road  to  my  right,  and  his  shells  went  overhead  with  a 
continual  rush,  passing  our  shells,  which  answered  back. 
The  whole  sky  was  filled  with  these  thunderbolts.  Many 
of  them  were  "Jack  Johnsons,"  which  raised  a  volume  of 
black  smoke  where  they  fell.  I  wondered  how  it  would 
feel  to  be  caught  by  one  of  them,  whether  one  would  have 
any  consciousness  before  being  scattered.  Fear,  which 
had  walked  with  me  part  of  the  way,  left  me  for  a  time. 
I  had  a  strange  sense  of  exhilaration,  an  intoxicated  in- 
terest in  this  foul  scene  and  the  activity  of  that  shell-fire. 

Peering  over  the  parapet,  we  saw  the  whole  panorama 
of  the  battleground.  It  was  but  an  ugly,  naked  plain, 
rising  up  to  Hulluch  and  Haisnes  on  the  north,  falling 
down  to  Loos  on  the  east,  from  where  we  stood,  and  rising 
again  to  Hill  70  (now  in  German  hands  again),  still  farther 
east  and  a  little  south. 

The  villages  of  Haisnes  and  Hulluch  fretted  the  sky- 
line, and  Fosse  8  was  a  black  wart  between  them.  The 
"Tower  Bridge,"  close  by  in  the  town  of  Loos,  was  the 
one  high  landmark  which  broke  the  monotony  of  this 
desolation. 

No  men  moved  about  this  ground.  Yet  thousands  of 
men  were  hidden  about  us  in  the  ditches,  waiting  for 
another  counter-attack  behind  storms  of  fire.  The  only 
moving  things  were  the  shells  which  vomited  up  earth 
and  smoke  and  steel  as  they  burst  in  all  directions  over 
the  whole  zone.  We  were  shelling  Hulluch  and  Haisnes 
and  Fosse  8  with  an  intense,  concentrated  fire,  and  the 
enemy  was  retaliating  by  scattering  shells  over  the  town 
of  Loos  and  our  new  line  between  Hill  70  and  the  chalk- 
pit, and  the  whole  length  of  our  line  from  north  to  south. 

Only  two  men  moved  about  abov'e  the  trenches.  They 
were  two  London  boys  carrying  a  gas-cylinder,  and 
whistling  as  though  it  were  a  health  resort  under  the 
autumn  sun.  ...  It  was  not  a  health  resort.     It  stank  of 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  189 

death,  from  piles  of  corpses,  all  mangled  and  in  a  mush 
of  flesh  and  bones  lying  around  the  Loos  redoubt  and  all 
the  ground  in  this  neighborhood,  and  for  a  long  distance 
north. 

Through  the  streets  of  Bethune  streamed  a  tide  of  war: 
the  transport  of  divisions,  gun-teams  with  their  limber 
ambulance  convoys,  ammunition  wagons,  infantry  mov- 
ing up  to  the  front,  despatch  riders,  stafF-ofFicers,  signalers, 
and  a  great  host  of  men  and  mules  and  motor-cars.  The 
rain  lashed  down  upon  the  crov/ds;  waterproofs  and  bur- 
berries and  the  tarpaulin  covers  of  forage-carts  streamed 
with  water,  and  the  bronzed  faces  of  the  soldiers  were 
dripping  wet.  Mud  splashed  them  to  the  thighs.  Foun- 
tains of  mud  spurted  up  from  the  wheels  of  gun-carriages. 
The  chill  of  winter  made  Highlanders  as  well  as  Indians 
— those  poor,  brave,  wretched  Indians  who  had  been 
flung  into  the  holding  attack  on  the  canal  at  La  Bassee, 
and  mown  down  in  the  inevitable  way  by  shrapnel  and 
machine-gun  bullets — shiver  in  the  wind. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  rain  and  great  death,  there  was  a  spirit 
of  exultation  among  many  fighting-men,  A.t  last  there 
was  a  break  in  the  months  of  stationary  warfare.  We 
were  up  and  out  of  the  trenches.  •  The  first  proofs  of  vic- 
tory were  visible  there  in  a  long  line  of  German  guns 
captured  at  Loos,  guarded  on  each  side  by  British  soldiers 
with  fixed  bayonets.  Men  moving  up  did  not  know  the 
general  failure  that  had  swamped  a  partial  success.  They 
stared  at  the  guns  and  said,  *'By  God — we've  got  'em 
going  this  time!" 

A  group  of  French  civilians  gathered  round  them,  ex- 
cited at  the  sight.  Artillery  oflScers  examined  their 
broken  breech-blocks  and  their  inscriptions: 

*'Pro  Gloria  et  Patria." 

"  Ultima  ratio  regis.'' 

The  irony  of  the  words  made  some  of  the  onlookers 
laugh.  A  French  interpreter  spoke  to  some  English 
officers  with  a  thrill  of  iov  in  his  voice.     Had  they  heard 


I90  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  last  news  from  Champagne?  The  French  had  broken 
through  the  enemy's  hne.  The  Germans  were  in  full  re- 
treat. ...  It  was  utterly  untrue,  because  after  the  desper- 
ate valor  of  heroic  youth  and  horrible  casualties,  the 
French  attack  had  broken  down.  But  the  spirit  of  hope 
came  down  the  cold  wind  and  went  with  the  men  whom  I 
saw  marching  to  the  fields  of  fate  in  the  slanting  rain,  as 
the  darkness  and  the  mist  came  to  end  another  day  of 
battle. 

Outside  the  headquarters  of  a  British  army  corps  stood 
another  line  of  captured  field-guns  and  several  machine- 
guns,  of  which  one  had  a  strange  history  of  adventure. 
It  was  a  Russian  machine-gun,  taken  by  the  Germans 
on  the  eastern  front  and  retaken  by  us  on  the  western 
front. 

In  General  Rawlinson's  heaaquarters  I  saw  a  queer 
piece  of  booty.  It  was  a  big  bronze  bell  used  by  the 
Germans  in  their  trenches  to  signal  a  British  gas-attack. 

General  Rawlinson  was  taking  tea  in  his  chateau  when 
I  called  on  him,  and  was  having  an  animated  argument 
with  Lord  Cavan,  commanding  the  Guards,  as  to  the  dis- 
posal of  the  captured  artillery  and  other  trophies.  Lord 
Cavan  claimed  some  for  his  own,  with  some  violence  of 
speech.  But  General  Rawlinson  was  bright  and  breezy 
as  usual.  Our  losses  were  not  worrying  him.  As  a  great 
general  he  did  not  allow  losses  to  worry  him.  He  ate  his 
tea  with  a  hearty  appetite,  and  chaffed  his  staff-officers. 
They  were  anticipating  the  real  German  counter-attack — 
a  big  affair.  Away  up  the  line  there  would  be  more  dead 
piled  up,  more  filth  and  stench  of  human  slaughter,  but 
the  smell  of  it  would  not  reach  back  to  headquarters. 


XIII 

In  a  despatch  by  Sir  John  French,  dated  October  15, 
1915,  and  issued  by  the  War  Office  on  November  ist  of 
that  year,  the  Commander-in-Chief  stated  that: 

"In  view  of  the  great  length  of  line  along  which  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  191 

British  troops  were  operating  it  was  necessary  to  keep  a 
strong  reserve  in  my  ozvn  hand.  The  nth  Corps,  con- 
sisting of  the  Guards,  the  21st  and  the  24th  Divisions, 
were  detailed  for  this  purpose.  This  reserve  was  the 
more  necessary  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  Tenth  French 
Army  had  to  postpone  its  attack  until  one  o'clock  in  the 
day;  and  further,  that  the  corps  operating  on  the  French 
left  had  to  be  directed  in  a  more  or  less  southeasterly 
direction,  involving,  in  case  of  our  success,  a  considerable 
gap  in  our  line.  To  insure,  however,  the  speedy  and 
effective  support  of  the  ist  and  4th  Corps  in  the  case  of 
their  success,  the  21st  and  24th  Divisions  passed  the  night 
of  the  24th  and  25th  on  the  line  Beuvry  (to  the  east  of 
Bethune) — Nceux-les-Mines.  The  Guards  Division  was 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Lillers  on  the  same  night." 

By  that  statement,  and  by  the  facts  that  happened  in 
accordance  with  it,  the  whole  scheme  of  attack  in  the 
battle  of  Loos  will  stand  challenged  in  history.  Lord 
French  admits  in  that  despatch  that  he  held  his  reserves 
"in  his  own  hand,"  and  later  he  states  that  it  was  not 
until  nine-thirty  on  the  morning  of  battle  that  "I  placed 
the  2ist  and  24th  Divisions  at  the  disposal  of  the  General 
Officer  commanding  First  Army."  He  still  held  the 
Guards.  He  makes,  as  a  defense  of  the  decision  to  hold 
back  the  reserves,  the  extraordinary  statement  that  there 
"would  be  a  considerable  gap  in  our  line  in  case  of  our 
success."  That  is  to  say,  he  was  actually  envisaging  a 
gap  in  the  line  if  the  attack  succeeded  according  to  his 
expectations,  and  risking  the  most  frightful  catastrophe 
that  may  befall  any  army  in  an  assault  upon  a  powerful 
enemy,  provided  with  enormous  reserves,  as  the  Germans 
were  at  that  time,  and  as  our  Commander-in-Chief  ought 
to  have  known. 

But  apart  from  that  the  whole  time-table  of  the  battle 
was,  as  it  now  appears,  fatally  wrong.  To  move  divisions 
along  narrow  roads  requires  an  immense  amount  of  time, 
even  if  the  roads  are  clear,  and  those  roads  toward  Loos 
were  crowded  with  the  transport  and  gun-limbers  of  the 


19^  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

assaulting  troops.  To  move  tiiem  in  daylight  to  the 
trenches  meant  inevitable  loss  of  life  and  almost  certain 
demoralization  under  the  enemy's  gun-fire. 

"Between  ii  a.m.  and  12  noon  the  central  brigade  of 
these  divisions  filed  past  me  at  Bethune  and  Noeux-les- 
Mines,  respectively,"  wrote  Sir  John  French.  It  was 
not  possible  for  them  to  reach  our  old  trenches  until  4 
P.M.  It  was  Gen.  Sir  Frederick  Maurice,  the  Chief  of 
Staff,  who  revealed  that  fact  to  me  afterward  in  an  official 
explanation,  and  it  was  confirmed  by  battalion  officers  of 
the  24th  Division  whom  I  met. 

That  time-table  led  to  disaster.  By  eight  o'clock  in 
the  morning  there  were  Scots  on  Hill  70.  They  had  been 
told  to  go  "all  out,"  with  the  promise  that  the 
ground  they  gained  would  be  consolidated  by  following 
troops.  Yet  no  supports  were  due  to  arrive  until  4  p.m. 
at  our  original  line  of  attack — still  away  back  from  Hill 
70 — by  which  time  the  enemy  had  recovered  from  his 
first  surprise,  had  reorganized  his  guns,  and  was  moving 
up  his  own  supports.  Tragedy  befell  the  Scots  on  Hill 
70  and  in  the  Cite  St.-Auguste,  as  I  have  told.  Worse 
tragedy  happened  to  the  21st  and  24th  Divisions.  They 
became  hopelessly  checked  and  tangled  in  the  traffic  of 
the  roads,  and  in  their  heavy  kit  were  exhausted  long 
before  they  reached  the  battlefield.  They  drank  the 
water  out  of  their  bottles,  and  then  were  parched.  They 
ate  their  iron  rations,  and  then  were  hungry.  Some  of 
their  transport  moved  too  far  fonvard  in  daylight,  was 
seen  by  German  observers,  ranged  on  by  German  guns, 
and  blown  to  bits  on  the  road.  The  cookers  were  de- 
stroyed, and  with  them  that  night's  food.  None  of  the 
officers  had  been  told  that  they  were  expected  to  attack 
on  that  day.  All  they  anticipated  was  the  duty  of  hold- 
ing the  old  support  trenches.  In  actual  fact  they  arrived 
when  the  enemy  was  preparing  a  heavy  counter-attack 
and  flinging  over  storms  of  shell-fire.  The  officers  had 
no  maps  and  no  orders.  They  were  utterly  bewildered 
with  the  situation,  and  had  no  knowledge  as  to  the  where- 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  193 

abouts  of  the  enemy  or  tlieir  own  objectives.  Their  men 
met  heavy  fire  for  the  first  time  when  their  physical  and 
moral  condition  was  weakened  by  the  long  march,  the 
lack  of  food  and  water,  and  the  unexpected  terror  ahead 
of  them.  They  crowded  into  broken  trenches,  where 
shells  burst  over  them  and  into  them.  Young  officers 
acting  on  their  own  initiative  tried  to  lead  their  men 
forward,  and  isolated  parties  went  forward,  but  uncer- 
tainly, not  knowing  the  ground  nor  their  purpose. 
Shrapnel  lashed  them,  and  high-explosive  shells  plowed 
up  the  earth  about  them  and  with  them.  Dusk  came, 
and  then  darkness.  Some  officers  were  cursing,  and  some 
wept,  fearing  dishonor.  The  men  were  huddled  together 
like  sheep  without  shepherds  when  wolves  are  about,  and 
saw  by  the  bewilderment  of  the  officers  that  they  were 
without  leadership.  It  is  that  which  makes  for  demorali- 
zation, and  these  men,  who  afterward  in  the  battle  of  the 
Somme  in  the  following  year  fought  with  magnificent 
valor,  were  on  that  day  at  Loos  demoralized  in  a  tragic 
and  complete  way.  Those  who  had  gone  forward  came 
back  to  the  crowded  trenches  and  added  to  the  panic  and 
the  rage  and  the  anguish.  Men  smashed  their  rifles  in  a 
kind  of  madness.  Boys  were  cursing  and  weeping  at  the 
same  time.  They  were  too  hopelessly  disordered  and  dis- 
mayed by  the  lack  of  guidance  and  by  the  shock  to  their 
sense  of  discipline  to  be  of  much  use  in  th  at  battle.  Some 
bodies  of  them  in  both  these  unhappy  divisions  arrived  in 
front  of  Hill  70  at  the  very  time  when  the  enemy  launched 
his  first  counter-attack,  and  were  driven  back  in  disorder. 
.  .  .  Some  days  later  I  saw  the  21st  Division  marching 
back  behind  the  lines.  Rain  slashed  them.  They  walked 
with  bent  heads.  The  young  officers  were  blanched  and  had 
a  beaten  look.  The  sight  of  those  dejected  men  was  tragic 
and  pitiful. 

XIV 

Meanwhile,   at  6  p.m.  on  the  evening  of  the  first  day  of 
battle,  the  Guards   arrived   at   Nceux-les-Mines.     As   I 


194  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

saw  them  march  up,  splendid  in  their  height  and  strength 
and  glory  of  youth,  I  looked  out  for  the  officers  I  knew, 
yet  hoped  I  should  not  see  them — that  man  who  had 
given  a  farewell  touch  to  the  flowers  in  the  garden  of  our 
billet,  that  other  one  who  knew  he  would  be  wounded, 
those  two  young  brothers  who  had  played  cricket  on  a 
sunny  afternoon.  I  did  not  see  them,  but  saw  only 
columns  of  men,  staring  grimly  ahead  of  them,  with 
strange,  unspeakable  thoughts  behind  their  masklike 
faces. 

It  was  not  until  the  morning  of  the  26th  that  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief "placed  them  at  the  disposal  of  the 
General  Officer  commanding  First  Army,"  and  it  was  on 
the  afternoon  of  Monday,  the  27th,  that  they  were  or- 
dered to  attack. 

By  that  time  we  had  lost  Fosse  8,  one  brigade  of  the 
9th  Scottish  Division  having  been  flung  back  to  its  own 
trenches  after  desperate  fighting,  at  frightful  cost,  after 
the  capture  of  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt  by  the  26th 
Brigade  of  that  division.  To  the  north  of  them  the  7th 
Division  was  also  suffering  horrible  losses  after  the  capt- 
ure of  the  quarries,  near  Hulluch,  and  the  village  of 
Haisnes,  which  afterward  was  lost.  The  commanding 
officers  of  both  divisions,  General  Capper  of  the  7th,  and 
General  Thesiger  of  the  9th,  were  killed  as  they  recon- 
noitered  the  ground,  and  wounded  men  were  pouring 
down  to  the  casualty  clearing  stations  if  they  had  the 
luck  to  get  so  far.  Some  of  them  had  not  that  luck,  but 
lay  for  nearly  two  days  before  they  were  rescued  by  the 
stretcher-bearers  from  Quality  Street  and  Philosophe. 

It  was  bad  all  along  the  line.  The  whole  plan  had  gone 
astray  from  the  beginning.  With  an  optimism  which 
was  splendid  in  fighting-men  and  costly  in  the  High  Com- 
mand, our  men  had  attacked  positions  of  enormous 
strength — held  by  an  enemy  in  the  full  height  of  his 
power — without  sufficient  troops  in  reserve  to  follow  up 
and  support  the  initial  attack,  to  consolidate  the  ground, 
and  resist  inevitable  counter-attacks.    What  reserves  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  195 

Commander-in-Chief  had  he  held  **in  his  own  hand"  too 
long  and  too  far  back. 

The  Guards  went  in  when  the  enemy  was  reorganized 
to  meet  them.  The  28th  Division,  aftersvard  in  support, 
was  too  late  to  be  a  decisive  factor. 

I  do  not  blame  Lord  French.  I  have  no  right  to  blame 
him,  as  I  am  not  a  soldier  nor  a  military  expert.  Fie  did 
his  best,  with  the  highest  motives.  The  blunders  he 
made  were  due  to  ignorance  of  modern  battles.  Many 
other  generals  made  many  other  blunders,  and  our  men 
paid  with  their  lives.  Our  High  Command  had  to  learn 
by  mistakes,  by  ghastly  mistakes,  repeated  often,  until 
they  became  visible  to  the  military  mind  and  were  paid 
for  again  by  the  slaughter  of  British  youth.  One  does 
not  blame.  A  writing-man,  who  was  an  observer  and 
recorder,  Hke  myself,  does  not  sit  in  judgment.  He  has 
no  right  to  judge.  He  merely  cries  out,  *'0  God!  .  .  . 
O  God!"  in  remembrance  of  all  that  agony  and  that  waste 
of  splendid  boys  who  loved  life,  and  died. 

On  Sunday,  as  I  have  told,  the  situation  was  full  of 
danger.  The  Scots  of  the  15th  Division,  weakened  by 
many  losses  and  exhausted  by  their  long  fatigue,  had  been 
forced  to  abandon  the  important  position  of  Puits  14'''^ 
— a  mine-shaft  half  a  mile  north  of  Hill  70,  linked  up  in 
defense  with  the  enemy's  redoubt  on  the  northeast  side 
of  Hill  70.  The  Germans  had  been  given  time  to  bring 
up  their  reserves,  to  reorganize  their  broken  lines,  and  to 
get  their  batteries  into  action  again. 

There  was  a  consultation  of  anxious  brigadiers  in  Loos 
when  no  man  could  find  safe  shelter  owing  to  the  heavy 
shelling  which  now  ravaged  among  the  houses.  Rations 
were  running  short,  and  rain  fell  through  the  roofless 
ruins,  and  officers  and  men  shivered  in  wet  clothes.  Dead 
bodies  blown  into  bits,  headless  trunks,  pools  of  blood, 
made  a  ghastly  mess  in  the  roadways  and  the  houses. 
Badly  wounded  men  were  dragged  down  into  the  cellars, 
and  lay  there  in  the  filth  of  Friday's  fighting.  The  head- 
quarters of  one  of  the  London  brigades  had  put  up  in  a 


196  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

roofless  barn,  but  were  shelled  out,  and  settled  down  on 
some  heaps  of  brick  in  the  open.  It  was  as  cold  as  death 
in  the  night,  and  no  fire  could  be  lighted,  and  iron  rations 
were  the  only  food,  until  two  chaplains,  "R.  C."  and 
Church  of  England  (no  difference  of  dogma  then),  came 
up  as  volunteers  in  a  perilous  adventure,  with  bottles  of 
hot  soup  in  mackintoshes.  They  brought  a  touch  of 
human  warmth  to  the  brigade  staff,  made  those  hours  of 
the  night  more  endurable,  but  the  men  farther  forward 
had  no  such  luck.  They  were  famishing  and  soaked,  in 
a  cold  hell  where  shells  tossed  up  the  earth  about  them  and 
spattered  them  with  the  blood  and  flesh  of  their  comrades. 

On  Monday  morning  the  situation  was  still  more  criti- 
cal, all  along  the  line,  and  the  Guards  were  ordered  up  to 
attack  Hill  70,  to  which  only  a  few  Scots  were  clinging 
on  the  near  slopes.  The  6th  Cavalry  Brigade  dismounted 
— no  more  dreams  of  exploiting  success  and  galloping 
round  Lens — were  sent  into  Loos  with  orders  to  hold  the 
village  at  all  cost,  with  the  men  of  the  15th  Division,  who 
had  been  left  there. 

The  Londoners  were  still  holding  on  to  the  chalk-pit 
south  of  Loos,  under  murderous  fire. 

It  was  a  bad  position  for  the  troops  sent  into  action  at 
that  stage.  The  result  of  the  battle  on  September  25th 
had  been  to  create  a  salient  thrust  like  a  wedge  into  the 
German  position  and  enfiladed  by  their  guns.  The  sides 
of  the  salient  ran  sharply  back — from  Hulluch  in  the 
north,  past  the  chalk-quarries  to  Givenchy,  and  in  the 
south  from  the  lower  slopes  of  Hill  70  past  the  Double 
Grassier  to  Grenay.  The  orders  given  to  the  Guards 
were  to  straighten  out  this  salient  on  the  north  by  capt- 
uring the  whole  of  Hill  70,  Puits  14^'',  to  the  north  of 
it,  and  the  chalk-pit  still  farther  north. 

It  was  the  2d  Brigade  of  Guards,  including  Grenadiers, 
Welsh  and  Scots  Guards,  which  was  to  lead  the  assault, 
while  the  1st  Brigade  on  the  left  maintained  a  holding 
position  and  the  3d  Brigade  was  in  support,  immediately 
behind. 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  197 

As  soon  as  the  Guards  started  to  attack  they  were  met 
by  a  heavy  storm  of  gas-shells.  This  checked  them  for 
a  time,  as  smoke-helmets — the  old-fashioned  things  of 
flannel  which  were  afterward  changed  for  the  masks  with 
nozles — had  to  be  served  out,  and  already  men  were 
choking  and  gasping  in  the  poisonous  fumes.  Among 
them  was  the  colonel  of  the  Grenadiers,  whose  command 
was  taken  over  by  the  major.  Soon  the  men  advanced 
again,  looking  like  devils,  as,  in  artillery  formation  (small 
separate  groups),  they  groped  their  way  through  the  poi- 
soned clouds.  Shrapnel  and  high  explosives  burst  over 
them  and  among  them,  and  many  men  fell  as  they  came 
within  close  range  of  the  enemy's  positions  running  from 
Hill  70  northward  to  the  chalk-pit. 

The  Irish  Guards,  supported  by  the  Coldstreamers, 
advanced  down  the  valley  beyond  Loos  and  gained  the 
lower  edge  of  Bois  Hugo,  near  the  chalk-pit,  while  the 
Scots  Guards  assaulted  Puits  14*"^  and  the  building  in 
its  group  of  houses  known  as  the  Keep.  Another  body 
of  Guards,  including  Grenadiers  and  Welsh,  attacked  at 
the  same  time  the  lower  slopes  of  Hill  70. 

Puits  14*"^  itself  was  won  by  a  party  of  Scots  Guards, 
led  by  an  officer  named  Captain  Cuthbert,  which  engaged 
in  hand-to-hand  fighting,  routing  out  the  enemy  from 
the  houses.  Some  companies  of  the  Grenadiers  came  to 
the  support  of  their  comrades  in  the  Scots  Guards,  but 
suffered  heavy  losses  themselves.  A  platoon  under  a 
young  lieutenant  named  Ayres  Ritchie  reached  the  Puits, 
and,  storming  their  way  into  the  Keep,  knocked  out  a 
machine-gun,  mounted  on  the  second  floor,  by  a  desperate 
bombing  attack.  The  officer  held  on  in  a  most  dauntless 
way  to  the  position,  until  almost  every  man  was  either 
killed  or  wounded,  unable  to  receive  support,  owing  to 
the  enfilade  fire  of  the  German  machine-guns. 

Night   had   now  come  on,  the   sky  lightened   by  the 

bursting  of  shells  and  flares,  and  terrible  in  its  tumult  of 

battle.     Some  of  the  Coldstreamers  had  gained  possession 

of  the  chalk-pit,  which  they  were  organizing  into  a  strong 
14 


198  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

defensive  position,  and  various  companies  of  the  Guards 
divisions,  after  heroic  assaults  upon  Hill  70,  where  they 
were  shattered  by  the  fire  which  met  them  on  the  crest 
from  the  enemy's  redoubt  on  the  northeast  side,  had  dug 
themselves  into  the  lower  slopes. 

There  was  a  strange  visitor  that  day  at  the  headquar- 
ters of  the  Guards  division,  where  Lord  Cavan  was  direct- 
ing operations.  A  young  officer  came  in  and  said,  quite 
calmly:  "Sir,  I  have  to  report  that  my  battalion  has  been 
cut  to  pieces.     We  have  been  utterly  destroyed." 

Lord  Cavan  questioned  him,  and  then  sent  for  another 
officer.  "Look  after  that  young  man,"  he  said,  quietly. 
"He  is  mad.     It  is  a  case  of  shell-shock." 

Reports  came  through  of  a  mysterious  officer  going 
the  round  of  the  batteries,  saying  that  the  Germans  had 
broken  through  and  that  they  had  better  retire.  Two 
batteries  did  actually  move  away. 

Another  unknown  officer  called  out,  "Retire!  Retire!" 
until  he  was  shot  through  the  head.  "German  spies!" 
said  some  of  our  officers  and  men,  but  the  Intelligence 
branch  said,  "Not  spies  .  .  .  madmen  .  .  .  poor  devils!" 

Before  the  dawn  came  the  Coldstreamers  made  another 
desperate  attempt  to  attack  and  hold  Puits  14'"^  but 
the  position  was  too  deadly  even  for  their  height  of  valor, 
and  although  some  men  pushed  on  into  this  raging  fire, 
the  survivors  had  to  fall  back  to  the  woods,  where  they 
strengthened  their  defensive  works. 

On  the  following  day  the  position  was  the  same,  the 
sufferings  of  our  men  being  still  further  increased  by 
heavy  shelling  from  8-inch  howitzers.  Colonel  Egerton 
of  the  Coldstream  Guards  and  his  adjutant  were  killed 
in  the  chalk-pit. 

It  was  now  seen  by  the  headquarters  staff  of  the  Guards 
Division  that  Puits  14^"''  was  untenable,  owing  to  its 
enfilading  by  heavy  artillery,  and  the  order  was  given  for 
a  retirement  to  the  chalk-pit,  which  was  a  place  of  sanct- 
uary owing  to  the  wonderful  work  done  throughout  the 
night  to  strengthen  its  natural  defensive  features  by  sand- 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  199 

bags  and  barbed  wire,  in  spite  of  machine-guns  which  raked 
it  from  the  neighboring  woods. 

The  retirement  was  done  as  though  the  men  were  on 
parade,  slowly,  and  in  perfect  order,  across  the  field  of 
fire,  each  man  bearing  himself,  so  their  officers  told  me, 
as  though  at  the  Trooping  of  the  Colors,  until  now  one 
and  then  another  fell  in  a  huddled  heap.  It  was  an 
astonishing  tribute  to  the  strength  of  tradition  among 
troops.  To  safeguard  the  honor  of  a  famous  name  these 
men  showed  such  dignity  in  the  presence  of  death  that 
even  the  enemy  must  have  been  moved  to  admiration. 

But  they  had  failed,  after  suffering  heavy  losses,  and 
the  Commander-in-Chief  had  to  call  upon  the  French  for 
help,  realizing  that  without  strong  assistance  the  sahent 
made  by  that  battle  of  Loos  would  be  a  death-trap.  The 
French  Tenth  Army  had  failed,  too,  at  Vimy,  thus  failing 
to  give  the  British  troops  protection  on  their  right  flank. 

**0n  representing  this  to  General  Joffre,"  wrote  Sir 
John  French,  "he  was  kind  enough  to  ask  the  commander 
of  the  northern  group  of  French  armies  to  render  us 
assistance.  General  Foch  met  those  demands  in  the  same 
friendly  spirit  which  he  has  always  displayed  throughout 
the  course  of  the  whole  campaign,  and  expressed  his 
readiness  to  give  me  all  the  support  he  could.  On  the 
morning  of  the  28th  we  discussed  the  situation,  and  the 
general  agreed  to  send  the  9th  French  Corps  to  take  over 
the  ground  occupied  by  us,  extending  from  the  French 
left  up  to  and  including  that  portion  of  Hill  70  which  we 
were  holding,  and  also  the  village  of  Loos.  This  rehef 
was  commenced  on  September  30th,  and  completed  on 
the  two  following  nights." 

So  ended  the  battle  of  Loos,  except  for  a  violent  coun- 
ter-attack delivered  on  October  8th  all  along  the  Hne 
from  Fosse  8  on  the  north  to  the  right  of  the  French  9th 
Corps  on  the  south,  with  twenty-eight  battalions  in  the 
first  line  of  assault.  It  was  preceded  by  a  stupendous 
bombardment  which  inflicted  heavy  casualties  upon  our 
1st  Division  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  chalk-pit,  and 


20O  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

upon  the  Guards  holding  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt  near 
HuUuch.  Once  again  those  brigades,  which  had  been 
sorely  tried,  had  to  crouch  under  a  fury  of  fire,  until  the 
living  were  surrounded  by  dead,  half  buried  or  carved 
up  into  chunks  of  flesh  in  the  chaos  of  broken  trenches. 
The  Germans  had  their  own  shambles,  more  frightful, 
we  were  told,  than  ours,  and  thousands  of  dead  lay  in 
front  of  our  lines  when  the  tide  of  their  attack  ebbed 
back  and  waves  of  living  men  were  broken  by  the  fire 
of  our  field-guns,  rifles,  and  machine-guns.  Sir  John 
French's  staff'  estimated  the  number  of  German  dead  as 
from  eight  to  nine  thousand.  It  was  impossible  to  make 
any  accurate  sum  in  that  arithmetic  of  slaughter,  and 
always  the  enemy's  losses  were  exaggerated  because  of 
the  dreadful  need  of  balancing  accounts  in  new-made 
corpses  in  that  Debit  and  Credit  of  war's  bookkeeping. 

What  had  we  gained  by  great  sacrifices  of  life?  Not 
Lens,  nor  Lille,  nor  even  Hill  70  (for  our  line  had  to  be 
withdrawn  from  those  bloody  slopes  where  our  men  left 
many  of  their  dead),  but  another  sharp-edged  salient 
enfiladed  by  German  guns  for  two  years  more,  and  a  foot- 
hold on  one  slag  heap  of  the  Double  Grassier,  where  our 
men  lived,  if  they  could,  a  few  yards  from  Germans  on 
the  other;  and  that  part  of  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt 
which  became  another  Hooge  where  English  youth  was 
blown  up  by  mines,  buried  by  trench-mortars,  condemned 
to  a  living  death  in  lousy  caves  dug  into  the  chalk.  An- 
other V-shaped  salient,  narrower  than  that  of  Ypres,  more 
dismal,  and  as  deadly,  among  the  pit-heads  and  the  black 
dust  hills  and  the  broken  mine-shafts  of  that  foul  country 
beyond  Loos. 

The  battle  which  had  been  begun  with  such  high  hopes 
ended  in  ghastly  failure  by  ourselves  and  by  the  French. 
Men  who  came  back  from  it  spoke  in  whispers  of  its  gen- 
eralship and  staff"  work,  and  said  things  which  were  dan- 
gerous to  speak  aloud,  cursing  their  fate  as  fighting-men, 
asking  of  God  as  well  as  of  mortals  why  the  courage  of 
the  soldiers  they  led  should  be  thrown  away  in  such  a 


THE  NATURE  OF  A  BATTLE  201 

muck  of  slaughter,  laughiug  with  despairing  mirth  at  the 
optimism  of  their  leaders,  who  had  been  lured  on  by  a 
strange,  false,  terrible  belief  in  German  weakness,  and 
looking  ahead  at  unending  vistas  of  such  massacre  as 
this  which  would  lead  only  to  other  salients,  after  des- 
perate and  futile  endeavor. 


Part  Four 

A  WINTER  OF 
DISCONTENT 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT 


THE  winter  of  191 5  was,  I  think,  the  worst  of  all. 
There  was  a  settled  hopelessness  in  it  which  was 
heavy  in  the  hearts  of  men — ours  and  the  enemy's.  In 
1914  there  was  the  first  battle  of  Ypres,  when  the  bodies 
of  British  soldiers  lay  strewn  in  the  fields  beyond  this 
city  and  their  brown  lines  barred  the  way  to  Calais,  but 
the  war  did  not  seem  likely  to  go  on  forever.  Most  men 
believed,  even  then,  that  it  would  end  quickly,  and  each 
side  had  faith  in  some  miracle  that  might  happen.  In 
1916-17  the  winter  was  foul  over  the  fields  of  the  Somme 
after  battles  which  had  cut  all  our  divisions  to  pieces  and 
staggered  the  soul  of  the  world  by  the  immense  martyr- 
dom of  boys — British,  French,  and  German — on  the 
western  front.  But  the  German  retreat  from  the  Somme 
to  the  shelter  of  their  Hindenburg  line  gave  some  respite 
to  our  men,  and  theirs,  from  the  long-drawn  fury  of  attack 
and  counter-attack,  and  from  the  intensity  of  gun-fire. 
There  was  at  best  the  mirage  of  something  like  victory 
on  our  side,  a  faint  flickering  up  of  the  old  faith  that  the 
Germans  had  weakened  and  were  nearly  spent. 

But  for  a  time  in  those  dark  days  of  191 5  there  was  no 
hope  ahead.  No  mental  dope  by  which  our  fighting-men 
could  drug  themselves  into  seeing  a  vision  of  the  war's 
end. 

The  battle  of  Loos  and  its  aftermath  of  minor  massacres 
in  the  ground  we  had  gained — the  new  horror  of  that  new 
sahent — had  sapped  into  the  confidence  of  those  battalion 
officers  and  men  who  had  been  assured  of  German  weak- 
ness by  cheery,  optimistic,  breezy-minded  generals.  It 
was  no  good  some  of  those  old  gentlemen  saying,  "We've 


2o6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

got  'em  beat!"  when  from  Hooge  to  the  Hohenzollern 
redoubt  our  men  sat  in  wet  trenches  under  ceaseless  bom- 
bardment of  heavy  guns,  and  when  any  small  attack 
they  made  by  the  orders  of  a  High  Command  which  be- 
lieved in  small  attacks,  without  much  plan  or  purpose, 
was  only  "asking  for  trouble"  from  German  counter- 
attacks by  mines,  trench-mortars,  bombing  sorties,  poi- 
son-gas, flame-throwers,  and  other  forms  of  frightfulness 
which  made  a  dirty  mess  of  flesh  and  blood,  without 
definite  result  on  either  side  beyond  piling  up  the  lists  of 
death. 

"It  keeps  up  the  fighting  spirit  of  the  men,"  said  the 
generals.     "We  must  maintain  an  aggressive  policy." 

They  searched  their  trench  maps  for  good  spots  where 
another  "small  operation"  might  be  organized.  There 
was  a  competition  among  the  corps  and  divisional  gen- 
erals as  to  the  highest  number  of  raids,  mine  explosions, 
trench-grabbings  undertaken  by  their  men. 

"My  corps,"  one  old  general  told  me  over  a  cup  of  tea 
in  his  headquarters  mess,  "beats  the  record  for  raids." 
His  casualties  also  beat  the  record,  and  many  of  his  officers 
and  men  called  him,  just  bluntly  and  simply,  "Our  old 
murderer."  They  disliked  the  necessity  of  dying  so  that 
he  might  add  one  more  raid  to  his  heroic  competition 
with  the  corps  commander  of  the  sector  on  the  left. 
When  they  waited  for  the  explosion  of  a  mine  which  after- 
ward they  had  to  "rush"  in  a  race  with  the  German 
bombing-parties,  some  of  them  saw  no  sense  in  the  pro- 
ceeding, but  only  the  likelihood  of  having  legs  and  arms 
torn  off"  by  German  stick-bombs  or  shells.  "What's  the 
good  of  it?"  they  asked,  and  could  find  no  answer  except 
the  satisfaction  of  an  old  man  listening  to  the  distant 
roar  of  the  new  tumult  by  which  he  had  "raised  hell" 
again. 

II 

The  autumn  of  191 5  was  wet  in  Flanders  and  Artois, 
where    our    men    settled    down — knee-deep    where    the 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  207 

trenches  were  worst — for  the  winter  campaign.  On 
rainy  days,  as  I  remember,  a  high  wind  hurtled  over  the 
Flemish  fields,  but  it  was  moist,  and  swept  gusts  of  rain 
into  the  faces  of  men  marching  through  mud  to  the  fight- 
ing-Hnes  and  of  other  men  doing  sentry  on  the  fire-steps 
of  trenches  into  which  water  came  trickhng  down  the 
sHmy  parapets. 

When  the  wind  dropped  at  dusk  or  dawn  a  whitish  fog 
crept  out  of  the  ground,  so  that  rifles  were  clammy  to 
the  touch  and  a  blanket  of  moisture  settled  on  every 
stick  in  the  dugouts,  and  nothing  could  be  seen  through 
the  veil  of  vapor  to  the  enemy's  hnes,  where  he  stayed 
invisible. 

He  was  not  likely  to  attack  on  a  big  scale  while  the 
battlefields  were  in  that  quagmire  state.  An  advancing 
wave  of  men  would  have  been  clogged  in  the  mud  after 
the  first  jump  over  the  shmy  sand-bags,  and  to  advance 
artillery  was  sheer  impossibility.  Nothing  would  be  done 
on  either  side  but  stick-in-the-mud  warfare  and  those 
trench-raids  and  minings  which  had  no  object  except 
"to  keep  up  the  spirit  of  the  men."  There  was  always 
work  to  do  in  the  trenches — draining  them,  strengthening 
their  parapets,  making  their  walls,  tihng  or  boarding  their 
floorways,  timbering  the  dugouts,  and  after  it  was  done 
another  rainstorm  or  snowstorm  undid  most  of  it,  and 
the  parapets  slid  down,  the  water  poured  in,  and  spaces 
were  opened  for  German  machine-gun  fire,  and  there 
was  less  head  cover  against  shrapnel  bullets  which  mixed 
with  the  raindrops,  and  high  explosives  which  smashed 
through  the  mud.  The  working  parties  had  a  bad  time 
and  a  wet  one,  in  spite  of  waders  and  gum  boots  which 
were  served  out  to  lucky  ones.  Some  of  them  wore  a 
new  kind  of  hat,  seen  for  the  first  time,  and  greeted  with 
guff'aws — the  "tin"  hat  which  later  became  the  head- 
gear of  all  fighting-men.  It  saved  many  head  wounds, 
but  did  not  save  body  wounds,  and  every  day  the  casualty 
lists  grew  longer  in  the  routine  of  a  warfare  in  which  there 
was  "Nothing  to  report." 


20.S  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Our  men  were  never  dry.  They  were  wet  in  their 
trenches  and  wet  in  their  dugouts.  They  slept  in  soaking 
clothes,  with  boots  full  of  water,  and  they  drank  rain 
with  their  tea,  and  ate  mud  with  their  "bully,"  and  en- 
dured it  all  with  the  philosophy  of  "grin  and  bear  it!" 
and  laughter,  as  I  heard  them  laughing  in  those  places 
between  explosive  curses. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  barbed  wire  the  Germans  were 
more  miserable,  not  because  their  plight  was  worse,  but 
because  I  think  they  lacked  the  English  sense  of  humor. 
In  some  places  they  had  the  advantage  of  our  men  in 
better  trenches,  with  better  drains  and  dugouts — due  to 
an  industry  with  which  ours  could  never  compete.  Here 
and  there,  as  in  the  ground  to  the  north  of  Hooge,  they 
were  in  a  worse  state,  with  such  rivers  in  their  trenches 
that  they  went  to  enormous  trouble  to  drain  the  Belle- 
warde  Lake  which  used  to  slop  over  in  the  rainy  season. 
Those  field-gray  men  had  to  wade  through  a  Slough  of 
Despond  to  get  to  their  line,  and  at  night  by  Hooge  where 
the  lines  were  close  together — only  a  few  yards  apart — 
our  men  could  hear  their  boots  squelching  in  the  mud 
with  sucking,  gurgling  noises. 

"They're  drinking  soup  again!"  said  our  humorists. 

There,  at  Hooge,  Germans  and  English  talked  to  one 
another,  out  of  their  common  misery. 

"How  deep  is  it  with  you.!*"  shouted  a  German  soldier. 

His  voice  came  from  behind  a  pile  of  sand-bags  which 
divided  the  enemy  and  ourselves  in  a  communication 
trench  between  the  main  hues. 

"Up  to  our  blooming  knees,"  said  an  English  corporal, 
who  was  trying  to  keep  his  bombs  dry  under  a  tarpaulin. 

"So.?  .  .  .  You  are  lucky  fellows.  We  are  up  to  our 
belts  in  it." 

It  v/as  so  bad  in  parts  of  the  line  during  November 
storms  that  whole  sections  of  trench  collapsed  into  a 
chaos  of  slime  and  ooze.  It  was  the  frost  as  well  as  the 
rain  which  caused  this  ruin,  making  the  earthworks  sink 
under  their  weight  of  sand-bags.     German  and  English 


A  WINTER  OF   DISCONTENT  209 

soldiers  were  exposed  to  one  another  like  ants  upturned 
from  their  nests  by  a  minor  landsHde.  They  ignored 
one  another.  They  pretended  that  the  other  fellows  were 
not  there.  They  had  not  been  properly  introduced.  In 
another  place,  reckless  because  of  their  discomfort,  the 
Germans  crawled  upon  their  slimy  parapets  and  sat  on 
top  to  dry  their  legs,  and  shouted:  "Don't  shoot!  Don't 
shoot!" 

Our  men  did  not  shoot.  They,  too,  sat  on  the  parapets 
drying  their  legs,  and  grinning  at  the  gray  ants  yonder, 
until  these  incidents  were  reported  back  to  G.  H.  Q. — 
where  good  fires  were  burning  under  dry  roofs — and 
stringent  orders  came  against  "fraternization."  Every 
German  who  showed  himself  was  to  be  shot.  Of  course 
any  EngHshman  who  showed  himself — owing  to  a  parapet 
falling  in — would  be  shot,  too.  It  was  six  of  one  and  half 
a  dozen  of  the  other,  as  always,  in  this  trench  warfare, 
but  the  dignity  of  G.  H.  Q.  would  not  be  outraged  by 
the  thought  of  such  indecent  spectacles  as  British  and 
Germans  refusing  to  kill  each  other  on  sight.  Some  of 
the  men  obeyed  orders,  and  when  a  German  sat  up  and 
said,  "Don't  shoot!"  plugged  him  through  the  head. 
Others  were  extremely  short-sighted.  .  .  .  Now  and  again 
Germans  crawled  over  to  our  trenches  and  asked  meekly 
to  be  taken  prisoner.  I  met  a  few  of  these  men  and  spoke 
with  them. 

"There  is  no  sense  in  this  war,"  said  one  of  them.  "It 
is  misery  on  both  sides.     There  is  no  use  in  it." 

That  thought  of  war's  futility  inspired  an  episode  which 
was  narrated  throughout  the  army  in  that  winter  of  '15, 
and  led  to  curious  conversations  in  dugouts  and  billets. 
Above  a  German  front-line  trench  appeared  a  plank  on 
which,  in  big  letters,  was  scrawled  these  words: 

"The  English  are  fools." 

"Not  such  bloody  fools  as  all  that!"  said  a  sergeant, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  the  plank  was  smashed  to  splinters 
by  rifle-fire. 

Another  plank  appeared,  with  other  words: 


2IO  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"The  French  are  fools." 

Loyalty  to  our  allies  caused  the  destruction  of  that  board. 

A  third  plank  was  put  up : 

"We're  all  fools.     Let's  all  go  home." 

That  board  was  also  shot  to  pieces,  but  the  message 
caused  some  laughter,  and  men  repeating  it  said :  "There's 
a  deal  of  truth  in  those  words.  Why  should  this  go  on? 
What's  it  all  about?  Let  the  old  men  who  made  this  war 
come  and  fight  it  out  among  themselves,  at  Hooge.  The 
fighting-men  have  no  real  quarrel  with  one  another.  We 
all  want  to  go  home  to  our  wives  and  our  work," 

But  neither  side  was  prepared  to  "go  home"  first. 
Each  side  was  in  a  trap — a  devil's  trap  from  which  there 
was  no  escape.  Loyalty  to  their  own  side,  discipline, 
with  the  death  penalty  behind  it,  spell  words  of  old 
tradition,  obedience  to  the  laws  of  war  or  to  the  caste 
which  ruled  them,  all  the  moral  and  spiritual  propaganda 
handed  out  by  pastors,  newspapers,  generals,  staff-officers, 
old  men  at  home,  exalted  women,  female  furies,  a  deep 
and  simple  love  for  England  and  Germany,  pride  of  man- 
hood, fear  of  cowardice — a  thousand  complexities  of 
thought  and  sentiment  prevented  men,  on  both  sides, 
from  breaking  the  net  of  fate  in  which  they  were  en- 
tangled, and  revolting  against  that  mutual,  unceasing 
massacre,  by  a  rising  from  the  trenches  with  a  shout  of, 
"We're  all  fools!  .  .  .  Let's  all  go  home!" 

In  Russia  they  did  so,  but  the  Germans  did  not  go  home, 
too.  As  an  army  and  a  nation  they  went  on  to  the  Peace 
of  Brest-Litovsk  and  their  doom.  But  many  German 
soldiers  were  converted  to  that  gospel  of  "We're  all 
fools!"  and  would  not  fight  again  with  any  spirit,  as  we 
found  at  times,  after  August  8th,  in  the  last  year  of  war. 

Ill 

The  men  remained  in  the  trenches,  and  suffered  horribly. 
I  have  told  about  lice  and  rats  and  mine-shafts  there. 
Another  misery  came  to  torture  soldiers  in  the  line,  and 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  211 

it  was  called  "trench-foot."  Many  men  standing  in 
slime  for  days  and  nights  in  field  boots  or  puttees  lost 
all  sense  of  feeling  in  their  feet.  These  feet  of  theirs,  so 
cold  and  wet,  began  to  swell,  and  then  to  go  **dead,"  and 
then  suddenly  to  burn  as  though  touched  by  red-hot 
pokers.  When  the  "reliefs"  went  up  scores  of  men  could 
not  walk  back  from  the  trenches,  but  had  to  crawl,  or  be 
carried  pick-a-back  by  their  comrades,  to  the  field  dress- 
ing stations.  So  I  saw  hundreds  of  them,  and,  as  the 
winter  dragged  on,  thousands.  The  medical  officers  cut 
off  their  boots  and  their  puttees,  and  the  socks  that  had 
become  part  of  their  skins,  exposing  blackened  and  rotting 
feet.  They  put  oil  on  them,  and  wrapped  them  round 
with  cotton-wool,  and  tied  labels  to  their  tunics  with  the 
name  of  that  new  disease — "trench-foot."  Those  medi- 
cal officers  looked  serious  as  the  number  of  cases  increased. 

"This  is  getting  beyond  a  joke,"  they  said.  "It  is 
pulling  down  the  battalion  strength  worse  than  wounds." 

Brigadiers  and  divisional  generals  were  gloomy,  and 
cursed  the  new  affliction  of  their  men.  Some  of  them 
said  it  was  due  to  damned  carelessness,  others  were  in- 
clined to  think  it  due  to  deliberate  malingering  at  a  time 
when  there  were  many  cases  of  self-inflicted  wounds  by 
men  who  shot  their  fingers  away,  or  their  toes,  to  get  out 
of  the  trenches. 

There  was  no  look  of  malingering  on  the  faces  of  those 
boys  who  were  being  carried  pick-a-back  to  the  ambu- 
lance-trains at  Remy  siding,  near  Poperinghe,  with  both 
feet  crippled  and  tied  up  in  bundles  of  cotton-wool. 
The  pain  was  martyrizing,  Hke  that  of  men  tied  to  burn- 
ing fagots  for  conscience'  sake.  In  one  battalion  of  the 
49th  (West  Riding)  Division  there  were  over  four  hundred 
cases  in  that  winter  of  'i 5.  Other  battalions  in  the  Ypres 
salient  suffered  as  much. 

It  was  not  until  the  end  of  the  winter,  when  oil  was 
taken  up  to  the  trenches  and  rubbing  drill  was  ordered, 
two  or  three  times  a  day,  that  the  malady  of  trench-foot 
was  reduced,  and  at  last  almost  eliminated. 


212  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

The  spirit  of  the  men  fought  against  all  that  misery, 
resisted  it,  and  would  not  be  beaten  by  it. 

A  sergeant  of  the  West  Riding  Division  was  badly 
wounded  as  he  stood  thigh-high  in  water.  A  bomb  or  a 
trench-mortar  smashed  one  of  his  legs  into  a  pulp  of 
bloody  flesh  and  splintered  bone.  Word  was  passed  down 
to  the  field  ambulance,  and  a  surgeon  came  up,  splashed 
to  the  neck  in  mud,  with  his  instruments  held  high.  The 
operation  was  done  in  the  water,  red  with  the  blood  of 
the  wounded  man,  who  was  then  brought  down,  less  a  leg, 
to  the  field  hospital.  He  was  put  on  one  side  as  a  man 
about  to  die.  .  .  .  But  that  evening  he  chattered  cheerfully, 
joked  with  the  priest  who  came  to  anoint  him,  and  wrote 
a  letter  to  his  wife. 

"I  hope  this  will  find  you  in  the  pink,  as  it  leaves  me," 
he  began.  He  mentioned  that  he  had  had  an  "accident" 
which  had  taken  one  of  his  legs  away.  *'  But  the  young- 
sters will  like  to  play  with  my  wooden  peg,"  he  wrote, 
and  discussed  the  joke  of  it.  The  people  round  his  bed 
marveled  at  him,  though  day  after  day  they  saw  great 
courage;  such  courage  as  that  of  another  man  who  was 
brought  in  mortally  wounded  and  lay  next  to  a  comrade 
on  the  operating  table. 

"Stick  it,  lad!"  he  said,  "stick  it!"  and  turned  his  head 
a  little  to  look  at  his  friend. 

Many  of  our  camps  were  hardly  better  than  the 
trenches.  Only  by  duck-boards  could  one  walk  about 
the  morass  in  which  huts  were  built  and  tents  were 
pitched.  In  the  wagon  lines  gunners  tried  in  vain  to 
groom  their  horses,  and  floundered  about  in  their  gum 
boots,  cursing  the  mud  which  clogged  bits  and  chains  and 
bridles,  and  could  find  no  comfort  anywhere  between 
Dickebusch  and  Locre. 

IV 

The  Hohenzollern  redoubt,  near  Fosse  8,  captured  by 
the  9th  Scottish  Division  in  the  battle  of  Loos,  could  not 
be  held  then  under  concentrated  gun-fire  from  German 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  213 

batteries,  and  the  Scots,  and  the  Guards  who  followed 
them,  after  heavy  losses,  could  only  cling  on  to  part  of  a 
communication  trench  (on  the  southeast  side  of  the 
earthworks)  nicknamed  "Big  Willie,"  near  another  trench 
called  "Little  Willie."  Our  enemies  forced  their  way 
back  into  some  of  their  old  trenches  in  this  outpost  be- 
yond their  main  lines,  and  in  spite  of  the  chaos  produced 
by  our  shelUfire  built  up  new  parapets  and  sand-bag 
barricades,  flung  out  barbed  wire,  and  dug  themselves 
into  this  graveyard  where  their  dead  and  ours  v/ere 
strewn. 

Perhaps  there  was  some  reason  why  our  generals  should 
covet  possession  of  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt,  some  good 
military  reason  beyond  the  spell  of  a  high-sounding  name. 
I  went  up  there  one  day  when  it  was  partly  ours  and 
stared  at  its  rigid  waves  of  mine-craters  and  trench  para- 
pets and  upheaved  chalk,  dazzling  white  under  a  blue 
sky,  and  failed  to  see  any  beauty  in  the  spot,  or  any  value 
in  it — so  close  to  the  German  lines  that  one  could  not 
cough  for  fear  of  losing  one's  head.  It  seemed  to  me  a 
place  not  to  gain  and  not  to  hold.  If  I  had  been  a  gen- 
eral (appalling  thought!)  I  should  have  said:  "Let  the 
enemy  have  that  little  hell  of  his.  Let  men  live  there 
among  half-buried  bodies  and  crawling  lice,  and  the  stench 
of  rotting  flesh.  There  is  no  good  in  it  for  us,  and  for 
him  will  be  an  abomination,  dreaded  by  his  men." 

But  our  generals  desired  it.  They  hated  to  think  that 
the  enemy  should  have  crawled  back  to  it  after  our  men 
had  been  there.  They  decided  to  "bite  it  off","  that 
blunt  nose  which  was  thrust  forward  to  our  line.  It  was 
an  operation  that  would  be  good  to  report  in  the  official 
communique.  Its  capture  would,  no  doubt,  increase  the 
morale  of  our  men  after  their  dead  had  been  buried  and 
their  wounded  patched  up  and  their  losses  forgotten. 

It  was  to  the  46th  Midland  Division  that  the  order  of 
assault  was  given  on  October  13th,  and  into  the  trenches 
went  the  lace-makers  of  Nottingham,  and  the  potters  of 
the  Five  Towns,  and  the  boot-makers  of  Leicester,  North 


214  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Staffordshires,  and  Robin  Hoods  and  Sherwood  Foresters, 
on  the  night  of  the  I2th. 

On  the  following  morning  our  artillery  concentrated  a 
tremendous  fire  upon  the  redoubt,  followed  at  i  p.m.  by 
volumes  of  smoke  and  gas.  The  chief  features  on  this 
part  of  the  German  line  were,  on  the  right,  a  group  of 
colliers'  houses  known  as  the  Corons  de  Pekin,  and  a  slag 
heap  known  as  the  Dump,  to  the  northeast  of  that  bigger 
dump  called  Fosse  8,  and  on  the  left  another  group  of 
cottages,  and  another  black  hillock  farther  to  the  right 
of  the  Fosse.  These  positions  were  in  advance  of  the 
Hohenzollern  redoubt  which  our  troops  were  to  attack. 

It  was  not  an  easy  task.  It  was  hellish.  Intense  as 
our  artillery  fire  had  been,  it  failed  to  destroy  the  enemy's 
barbed  wire  and  front  trenches  sufficiently  to  clear  the 
way,  and  the  Germans  were  still  working  their  machine- 
guns  when  the  fuses  were  lengthened,  the  fire  lifted,  and 
the  gas-clouds  rolled  away. 

I  saw  that  bombardment  on  the  morning  of  Wednesday, 
October  13th,  and  the  beginning  of  the  attack  from  a 
slag  heap  close  to  some  of  our  heavy  guns.  It  was  a  fine, 
clear  day,  and  some  of  the  French  miners  living  round  the 
pit-heads  on  our  side  of  the  battle  line  climbed  up  iron 
ladders  and  coal  heaps,  roused  to  a  new  interest  in  the 
spectacle  of  war  which  had  become  a  monotonous  and 
familiar  thing  in  their  lives,  because  the  intensity  of  our 
gun-fire  and  the  volumes  of  smoke-clouds,  and  a  certain 
strange,  whitish  vapor  which  was  wafted  from  our  lines 
toward  the  enemy  stirred  their  imagination,  dulled  by 
the  daily  din  of  guns,  to  a  sense  of  something  beyond  the 
usual  flight  of  shells  in  their  part  of  the  war  zone. 

"The  English  are  attacking  again!"  was  the  message 
which  brought  out  these  men  still  living  among  ruined 
cottages  on  the  edge  of  the  slaughter-fields.  They  stared 
into  the  mist,  where,  beyond  the  brightness  of  the  autumn 
sun,  men  were  about  to  fight  and  die.  It  was  the  same 
scene  that  I  had  watched  when  I  went  up  to  the  Loos 
redoubt  in   the    September  battle — a   flat,   bare,   black 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  215 

plain,  crisscrossed  with  the  whitish  earth  of  the  trenches 
rising  a  httle  toward  Loos  and  then  faUing  again  so  that 
in  the  village  there  only  the  Tower  Bridge  was  visible, 
with  its  steel  girders  glinting,  high  over  the  horizon  line. 
To  the  left  the  ruins  of  Hulluch  fretted  the  low-lying 
clouds  of  smoke,  and  beyond  a  huddle  of  broken  houses 
far  away  was  the  town  of  Haisnes.  Fosse  8  and  the  Ho- 
henzollern  redoubt  were  hummocks  of  earth  faintly  visible 
through  drifting  clouds  of  thick,  sluggish  vapor. 

On  the  edge  of  this  battleground  the  fields  were  tawny 
under  the  golden  light  of  the  autumn  sun,  and  the  broken 
towers  of  village  churches,  red  roofs  shattered  by  shell- 
fire,  trees  stripped  bare  of  all  leaves  before  the  wind  of 
autumn  touched  them,  were  painted  in  clear  outlines 
against  the  gray-blue  of  the  sky. 

Our  guns  had  been  invisible.  Not  one  of  all  those 
batteries  which  were  massed  over  a  wide  stretch  of  coun- 
try could  be  located  before  the  battle  by  a  searching 
glass.  But  when  the  bombardment  began  it  seemed  as 
though  our  shells  came  from  every  field  and  village  for 
miles  back,  behind  the  lines. 

The  glitter  of  those  bursting  shells  stabbed  through  the 
smoke  of  their  explosion  with  little,  twinkling  flashes,  like 
the  sparkle  of  innumerable  mirrors  heliographing  messages 
of  death.  There  was  one  incessant  roar  rising  and  falling 
in  waves  of  prodigious  sound.  The  whole  line  of  battle 
was  in  a  grayish  murk,  which  obscured  all  landmarks,  so 
that  even  the  Tower  Bridge  was  but  faintly  visible. 

Presently,  when  our  artillery  lifted,  there  were  new 
clouds  rising  from  the  ground  and  spreading  upward  in 
a  great  dense  curtain  of  a  fleecy  texture.  They  came 
from  our  smoke-shells,  which  were  to  mask  our  infantry 
attack.  Through  them  and  beyond  them  rolled  another 
wave  of  cloud,  a  thinner,  whiter  vapor,  which  clung  to 
the  ground  and  then  curled  forward  to  the  enemy's  lines. 

"That's  our  gas!"  said  a  voice  on  one  of  the  slag  heaps, 
amid  a  group  of  observers — English  and  French  ofl&cers. 

"And  the  wind  is  dead  right  for  it,"  said  another  voice. 


2i6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"The  Germans  will  get  a  taste  of  it  this  time!" 

Then  there  was  silence,  and  some  of  those  observers 
held  their  breath  as  though  that  gas  had  caught  their 
own  throats  and  choked  them  a  little.  They  tried  to 
pierce  through  that  bar  of  cloud  to  see  the  drama  behind 
its  curtain — men  caught  in  those  fumes,  the  terror- 
stricken  flight  before  its  advance,  the  sudden  cry  of  the 
enemy  trapped  in  their  dugouts.  Imagination  leaped  out, 
through  invisibility,  to  the  realization  of  the  things  that 
were  happening  beyond. 

From  our  place  of  observation  there  were  brief  glimpses 
of  the  human  element  in  this  scene  of  impersonal  powers 
and  secret  forces.  Across  a  stretch  of  flat  ground  beyond 
some  of  those  zigzag  lines  of  trenches  little  black  things 
were  scurrying  forward.  They  were  not  bunched  to- 
gether in  close  groups,  but  scattered.  Some  of  them 
seemed  to  hesitate,  and  then  to  fall  and  lie  where  they 
fell,  others  hurrying  on  until  they  disappeared  in  the 
drifting  clouds. 

It  was  the  foremost  line  of  our  infantry  attack,  led  by 
the  bombers.  The  Germans  were  firing  tempests  of 
shells.  Some  of  them  v/ere  curiously  colored,  of  a  pinkish 
hue,  or  with  orange-shaped  pufi^s  of  vivid  green.  They 
were  poison-shells  giving  out  noxious  gases.  All  the 
chemistry  of  death  was  poured  out  on  both  sides — and 
through  it  went  the  men  of  the  Midland  Division. 

The  attack  on  the  right  was  delivered  by  a  brigade  of 
Staffordshire  men,  who  advanced  in  four  lines  toward 
the  Big  Willie  trench  which  formed  the  southeast  side  of 
the  Hohcnzollern  redoubt.  The  leading  companies,  who 
were  first  over  our  own  parapets,  made  a  quick  rush, 
half  blinded  by  the  smoke  and  the  gaseous  vapors  which 
filled  the  air,  and  were  at  once  received  by  a  deadly  fire 
from  many  machine-guns.  It  swept  their  ranks,  and 
men  fell  on  all  sides.  Others  ran  on  in  little  parties  flung 
out  in  extended  order. 

Young  officers  behaved  with  desperate  gallantry,  and 
as  they  fell  cheered  their  men  on,  while  others  ran  forward 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  217 

shouting,  followed  by  numbers  which  dwindled  at  every 
yard,  so  that  only  a  few  reached  the  Big  Willie  trench  in 
the  hrst  assault. 

A  bombing-party  of  North  Staffordshire  men  cleared 
thirty  yards  of  the  trench  by  the  rapidity  with  which 
they  flung  their  hand-grenades  at  the  German  bombers 
who  endeavored  to  keep  them  out,  and  again  and  again 
they  kept  at  bay  a  tide  of  field-gray  men,  who  swarmed 
up  the  communication  trenches,  by  a  series  of  explosions 
W'hich  blew  many  of  them  to  bits  as  bomb  after  bomb 
v/as  hurled  into  their  mass.  Other  Germans  followed, 
flinging  their  own  stick-bombs. 

The  StafFordshires  did  not  yield  until  nearly  every  man 
was  wounded  and  many  were  killed.  Even  then  they 
retreated  yard  by  yard,  still  flinging  grenades  almost 
with  the  rhythm  of  a  sower  who  scatters  his  seed,  each 
motion  of  the  hand  and  arm  letting  go  one  of  those  steel 
pomegranates  which  burst  with  the  noise  of  a  high- 
explosive  shell. 

The  survivors  fell  back  to  the  other  side  of  a  barricade 
made  in  the  Big  Willie  trench  by  some  of  their  men 
behind.  Behind  them  again  was  another  barrier,  in  case 
the  first  should  be  rushed. 

It  seemed  as  if  they  might  be  rushed  now,  for  the  Ger- 
mans were  swarming  up  Big  WilHe  with  strong  bombing- 
parties,  and  would  soon  blast  a  way  through  unless  they 
were  thrust  beyond  the  range  of  hand-grenades.  It  was 
a  young  lieutenant  named  Hawker,  with  some  South 
Staflfordshire  men,  who  went  forward  to  meet  this  attack 
and  kept  the  enemy  back  until  four  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon, when  only  a  few  living  men  stood  among  the  dead 
and  they  had  to  fall  back  to  the  second  barrier. 

Darkness  now  crept  over  the  battlefield  and  filled  the 
trenches,  and  in  the  darkness  the  wounded  men  w^ere 
carried  back  to  the  rear,  while  those  who  had  escaped 
worked  hard  to  strengthen  their  defenses  by  sand-bags 
and  earthworks,  knowing  that  their  only  chance  of  life 
lay  in  fierce  industry. 


2i8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Early, next  morning  an  attempt  was  made  by  other 
battalions  to  come  to  the  reHef  of  those  who  held  on 
behind  those  barriers  in  Big  Willie  trench.  They  were 
Nottingham  men — Robin  Hoods  and  other  Sherwood 
lads — and  they  came  across  the  open  ground  in  two  direc- 
tions, attacking  the  west  as  well  as  the  east  ends  of  the 
German  communication  trenches  which  formed  the  face 
of  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt. 

They  were  supported  by  rifle  grenade-fire,  but  their 
advance  was  met  by  intense  fire  from  artillery  and 
machine-guns,  so  that  many  were  blown  to  bits  or  man- 
gled or  maimed,  and  none  could  reach  their  comrades  in 
Big  Willie  trench. 

While  one  brigade  of  the  Midland  men  had  been  fight- 
ing like  this  on  the  right,  another  brigade  had  been  en- 
gaged on  the  left.  It  contained  Sherwood,  Leicester,  and 
Lincoln  men,  who,  on  the  afternoon  of  October  13th,  went 
forward  to  the  assault  with  very  desperate  endeavor. 
Advancing  in  four  lines,  the  leading  companies  were  suc- 
cessful in  reaching  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt,  smashed 
through  the  barbed  wire,  part  of  which  was  uncut,  and 
reached  the  Fosse  trench  which  forms  the  north  base  of 
the  salient. 

Machine-gun  fire  cut  down  the  first  two  lines  severely 
and  the  two  remaining  lines  were  heavily  shelled  by  Ger- 
man artillery.  It  was  an  hour  in  which  the  courage  of 
those  men  was  agonized.  They  were  exposed  on  naked 
ground  swept  by  bullets,  the  atmosphere  was  heavy  with 
gas  and  smoke;  all  the  abomination  of  battle — the  moan- 
ing of  the  wounded,  the  last  cries  of  the  dying,  the  death- 
crawl  of  stricken  beings  holding  their  broken  limbs  and 
their  entrails — was  around  them,  and  in  front  a  hidden 
enemy  with  unlimited  supplies  of  ammunition  and  a  better 
position. 

The  Robin  Hoods  and  the  men  of  Lincoln  and  Leices- 
tershire were  sustained  in  that  shambles  by  the  spirit 
that  had  come  to  them  through  the  old  yeoman  stock  in 
which  their  traditions  were  rooted,  and  those  who  had 


A  WINTER  OF   DISCONTENT  219 

not  fallen  went  forward,  past  their  wounded  comrades, 
past  these  poor,  bloody,  moaning  men,  to  the  German 
trenches  behind  the  redoubt. 

At  2.15  P.M.  some  Monmouth  men  came  up  in  support, 
and  while  their  bombers  were  at  work  some  of  the  Lin- 
colns  pushed  up  with  a  machine-gun  to  a  point  within 
sixty  yards  from  the  Fosse  trench,  where  they  stayed  till 
dark,  and  then  were  forced  to  fall  back. 

At  this  time  parties  of  bombers  were  trying  to  force 
their  way  up  the  Little  Willie  trench  on  the  extreme  left 
of  the  redoubt,  and  here  ghastly  fighting  took  place. 
Some  of  the  Leicesters  made  a  dash  three  hundred  yards 
up  the  trench,  but  were  beaten  back  by  overpowering 
numbers  of  German  bombers  and  bayonet-men,  and  again 
and  again  other  Midland  lads  went  up  that  alle>'^vay  of 
death,  flinging  their  grenades  until  they  fell  or  until  few 
comrades  were  left  to  support  them  as  they  stood  among 
their  dead  and  dying. 

Single  men  held  on,  throwing  and  throwing,  until  there 
was  no  strength  in  their  arms  to  hurl  another  bomb,  or 
until  death  came  to  them.  Yet  the  business  went  on 
through  the  darkness  of  the  afternoon,  and  into  the 
deeper  darkness  of  the  night,  lit  luridly  at  moments  by 
the  white  illumination  of  German  flares  and  by  the  flash 
of  bursting  shells. 

Isolated  machine-guns  in  uncaptured  parts  of  the  re- 
doubt still  beat  a  tattoo  like  the  ruflfle  of  war-drums,  and 
from  behind  the  barriers  in  the  Big  Willie  trench  came 
the  sharp  crack  of  English  rifles,  and  dull  explosions  of 
other  bombs  flung  by  other  Englishmen  very  hard  pressed 
that  night. 

In  the  outer  trenches,  at  the  nose  of  the  salient,  fresh 
companies  of  Sherwood  lads  were  feeling  their  way  along, 
mixed  up  confusedly  with  comrades  from  other  companies, 
\^ounded  or  spent  with  fighting,  but  determined  to  hold 
the  ground  they  had  won. 

Some  of  the  Robin  Hoods  up  Little  Willie  trench  were 
holding  out  desperately  and  almost  at  the  last  gasp,  when 


2,20  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

they  were  relieved  by  other  Sherwoods,  and  it  was  here 
that  a  young  officer  named  Vickers  was  found  in  the 
way  that  won  him  his  V.  C. 

Charles  Geoffrey  Vickers  stood  there  for  hours  against 
a  horde  of  men  eager  for  his  death,  eager  to  get  at  the 
men  behind  him.  But  they  could  not  approach.  He 
and  his  fellow-bombers  kept  twenty  yards  or  more  clear 
before  them,  and  any  man  who  flung  himself  forward  was 
the  target  of  a  hand-grenade. 

From  front  and  from  flank  German  bombs  came  whizz- 
ing, falling  short  sometimes,  with  a  blasting  roar  that  tore 
down  lumps  of  trench,  and  sometimes  falling  very  close 
— close  enough  to  kill. 

Vickers  saw  some  of  his  best  men  fall,  but  he  kept  the 
barrier  still  intact  by  bombing  and  bombing. 

When  many  of  his  comrades  were  dead  or  wounded,  he 
wondered  how  long  the  barrier  would  last,  and  gave 
orders  for  another  to  be  built  behind  him,  so  that  when  the 
rush  came  it  would  be  stopped  behind  him — and  over  him. 

Men  worked  at  that  barricade,  piling  up  sand-bags, 
and  as  it  was  built  that  young  lieutenant  knew  that  his 
own  retreat  was  being  cut  off  and  that  he  was  being 
coffined  in  that  narrow  space.  Two  other  men  were  with 
him — I  never  learned  their  names — and  they  were  hardly 
enough  to  hand  up  bombs  as  quickly  as  he  wished  to  throw 
them. 

Away  there  up  the  trench  the  Germans  were  waiting 
for  a  pounce.  Though  wounded  so  that  he  felt  faint 
and  giddy,  he  called  out  for  more  bombs.  "More!"  he 
said,  "More!"  and  his  hand  was  like  a  machine  reach- 
ing out  and  throwing. 

Rescue  came  at  last,  and  the  wounded  officer  was 
hauled  over  the  barricade  which  he  had  ordered  to  be 
built  behind  him,  closing  up  his  way  of  escape. 

All  through  October  14th  the  Midland  men  of  the  46tli 
Division  held  on  to  their  ground,  and  some  of  the  Sher- 
woods made  a  new  attack,  clearing  the  enemy  out  of  the 
east  portion  of  the  redoubt. 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  221 

It  was  lucky  that  it  coincided  with  a  counter-attack 
made  by  the  enemy  at  a  different  point,  because  it  reHeved 
the  pressure  there.  Bombing  duels  continued  hour  after 
hour,  and  human  nature  could  hardly  have  endured  so 
long  a  struggle  without  fatigue  beyond  the  strength  of 
men. 

So  it  seems;  yet  when  a  brigade  of  Guards  came  up  on 
the  night  of  October  15th  the  enemy  attacked  along  the 
whole  line  of  redoubts,  and  the  Midland  men,who  were  just 
about  to  leave  the  trenches,  found  themselves  engaged  in 
a  new  action.  They  had  to  fight  again  before  they  could 
go,  and  they  fought  like  demons  or  demigods  for  their 
right  of  way  and  home,  and  bombed  the  enemy  back  to 
his  holes  in  the  ground. 

So  ended  the  assault  on  the  Hohenzollern  by  the  Mid- 
land men  of  England,  whose  division,  years  later,  helped 
to  break  the  Hindenburg  line  along  the  great  canal  south 
of  St.-Quentin. 

What  good  came  of  it  mortal  men  cannot  say,  unless 
the  generals  who  planned  it  hold  the  secret.  It  cost  a 
heavy  price  in  life  and  agony.  It  demonstrated  the  fight- 
ing spirit  of  many  English  boys  who  did  the  best  they 
could,  with  the  rage,  and  fear,  and  madness  of  great 
courage,  before  they  died  or  fell,  and  it  left  some  living 
men,  and  others  who  relieved  them  in  Big  Willie  and 
Little  Willie  trenches,  so  close  to  the  enemy  that  one 
could  hear  them  cough,  or  swear  in  guttural  whispers. 

And  through  the  winter  of  '15,  and  the  years  that  fol- 
lowed, the  Hohenzollern  redoubt  became  another  Hooge, 
as  horrible  as  Hooge,  as  deadly,  as  damnable  in  its  filthy 
perils,  where  men  of  English  blood,  and  Irish,  and  Scot- 
tish, took  their  turn,  and  hated  it,  and  counted  them- 
selves lucky  if  they  escaped  from  its  prison-house,  whose 
walls  stank  of  new  and  ancient  death. 

Among  those  who  took  their  turn  in  the  hell  of  the 
Hohenzollern  were  the  m^en  of  the  12th  Division,  New 
Army  men,  and  all  of  the  old  stock  and  spirit  of  England, 


222  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

bred  in  the  shires  of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  Gloucester  and 
Bedford,  and  in  Surrey,  Kent,  Sussex,  and  Middlesex 
(which  meant  London),  as  the  names  of  their  battalions 
told.  In  September  they  relieved  the  Guards  and  cav- 
alry at  Loos;  in  December  they  moved  on  to  Givenchy, 
and  in  February  they  began  a  long  spell  at  the  Hohen- 
zollern.  It  was  there  the  English  battalions  learned  the 
worst  things  of  war  and  showed  the  quality  of  English 
courage. 

A  man  of  Kent,  named  Corporal  Cotter,  of  the  Buffs, 
was  marvelous  in  spirit,  stronger  than  the  flesh. 

On  the  night  of  March  6th  an  attack  was  made  by  his 
company  along  an  enemy  trench,  but  his  own  bombing- 
party  was  cut  off,  owing  to  heavy  casualties  in  the  center 
of  the  attack.  Things  looked  serious  and  Cotter  went 
back  under  heavy  fire  to  report  and  bring  up  more  bombs. 

On  the  return  journey  his  right  leg  was  blown  off  close 
below  the  knee  and  he  was  wounded  in  both  arms.  By 
a  kind  of  miracle — the  miracle  of  human  courage — he 
did  not  drop  down  and  die  in  the  mud  of  the  trench,  mud 
so  deep  that  unwounded  men  found  it  hard  to  walk — 
but  made  his  way  along  fifty  yards  of  trench  toward  the 
crater  where  his  comrades  were  hard  pressed.  He  came 
up  to  Lance-corporal  Newman,  who  was  bombing  with 
his  sector  to  the  right  of  the  position.  Cotter  called  to 
him  and  directed  him  to  bomb  six  feet  toward  where  help 
was  most  needed,  and  worked  his  way  forward  to  the 
crater  where  the  Germans  had  developed  a  violent 
counter-attack. 

Men  fell  rapidly  under  the  enemy's  bomb-fire,  but 
Cotter,  with  only  one  leg,  and  bleeding  from  both  arms, 
steadied  his  comrades,  who  were  beginning  to  have  the 
wind-up,  as  they  say,  issued  orders,  controlled  the  fire, 
and  then  altered  dispositions  to  meet  the  attack.  It  was 
repulsed  after  two  hours'  fighting,  and  only  then  did 
Cotter  allow  his  wounds  to  be  bandaged.  From  the  dug- 
out where  he  lay  while  the  bombardment  still  continued 
he  called  out  cheery  words  to  the  men,  until  he  was  car- 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  223 

ried  down,  fourteen  hours  later.  He  received  the  V.  C, 
but  died  of  his  wounds. 

Officers  and  men  vied  with  one  another,  yet  not  for 
honor  or  reward,  round  these  craters  of  the  Hohenzollern, 
and  in  the  mud,  and  the  fumes  of  shells,  and  rain-swept 
darkness,  and  all  the  black  horror  of  such  a  time  and 
place,  sometimes  in  groups  and  sometimes  quite  alone, 
did  acts  of  supreme  valor.  When  all  the  men  in  one  of 
these  infernal  craters  were  dead  or  wounded  Lieut. 
Lea  Smith,  of  the  Buffs,  ran  forward  with  a  Lewis  gun, 
helped  by  Private  Bradley,  and  served  it  during  a  fierce 
attack  by  German  bombers  until  it  jammed. 

Then  he  left  the  gun  and  took  to  bombing,  and  that 
single  figure  of  his,  flinging  grenades  like  an  overarm 
bowler,  kept  the  enemy  at  bay  until  reinforcements 
reached  him. 

Another  officer  of  the  Buffs — by  name  Smeltzer — with- 
drew his  platoon  under  heavy  fire,  and,  although  he  was 
wounded,  fought  his  way  back  slowly  to  prevent  the 
enemy  from  following  up.  The  men  were  proud  of  his 
gallantry,  but  when,  he  was  asked  what  he  had  done  he 
could  think  of  nothing  except  that  "when  the  Boches 
began  sheUing  I  got  into  a  dugout,  and  when  they  stopped 
I  came  out  again.'* 

There  were  many  men  like  that  who  did  amazing 
things  and,  in  the  English  way,  said  nothing  of  them. 
Of  that  modesty  was  Capt.  Augrere  Dawson,  of  the 
West  Kents,  who  did  not  bother  much  about  a  bullet  he 
met  on  his  way  to  a  crater,  though  it  traveled  through 
his  chest  to  his  shoulder-blade.  He  had  it  dressed,  and 
then  went  back  to  lead  his  men,  and  remained  with  them 
until  the  German  night  attack  was  repulsed.  He  was 
again  wounded,  this  time  in  the  thigh,  but  did  not  trouble 
the  stretcher-men  (they  had  a  lot  to  do  on  the  night  of 
March  i8th  and  19th),  and  trudged  back  alone. 

It  was  valor  that  was  paid  for  by  flesh  and  blood.  The 
honors  gained  by  the  12th  Division  in  a  few  months  of 
trench  warfare — one  V.  C,  sixteen  D.  S.  C.'s,  forty-five 


224  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Military  Crosses,  thirty-four  IVIilitary  Medals — were  won 
by  the  loss  in  casualties  of  more  than  fourteen  thousand 
men.  That  is  to  say,  the  losses  of  their  division  in  that 
time,  made  up  by  new  drafts,  was  loo  per  cent.;  and  the 
Hohenzollern  took  the  highest  toll  of  life  and  hmbs. 


I  heard  no  carols  in  the  trenches  on  Christmas  Eve  in 
191 5,  but  afterward,  when  I  sat  with  a  pint  of  water  in 
each  of  my  top-boots,  among  a  company  of  men  who 
were  wet  to  the  knees  and  slathered  with  moist  mud,  a 
friend  of  mine  raised  his  hand  and  said,  "Listen!" 

Through  the  open  door  came  the  music  of  a  mouth- 
organ,  and  it  was  playing  an  old  tune: 

God  rest  ye,  merry  gentlemen. 

Let  nothing  you  dismay, 
For  Jesus  Christ,  our  Saviour, 

Was  born  on  Christmas  Day. 

Outside  the  wind  was  howling  across  Flanders  with  a 
doleful  whine,  rising  now  and  then  into  a  savage  violence 
which  rattled  the  window-panes,  and  beyond  the  booming 
of  its  lower  notes  was  the  faint,  dull  rumble  of  distant 
guns. 

"Christmas  Eve!"  said  an  officer.  "Nineteen  hundred 
and  fifteen  years  ago  .  .  .  and  now — this!" 

He  sighed  heavily,  and  a  few  moments  later  told  a 
funny  story,  which  was  followed  by  loud  laughter.  And 
so  it  was,  I  think,  in  every  billet  in  Flanders  and  in  every 
dugout  that  Christmas  Eve,  where  men  thought  of  the 
meaning  of  the  day,  with  its  message  of  peace  and  good- 
will, and  contrasted  it  with  the  great,  grim  horror  of  the 
war,  and  spoke  a  few  words  of  perplexity;  and  then,  after 
that  quick  sigh  (how  many  comrades  had  gone  since  last 
Christmas  Day!),  caught  at  a  jest,  and  had  the  courage 
of  laughter.  It  was  queer  to  find  the  spirit  of  Christmas, 
the  little  tendernesses  of  the  old  tradition,  the  toys  and 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  225 

trinkets  of  its  feast-day,  in  places  v/here  Death  had  been 
busy — and  where  the  spirit  of  evil  lay  in  ambush! 

So  it  was  when  I  went  through  Armentieres  within 
easy  range  of  the  enemy's  guns.  Already  six  hundred 
civilians — mostly  women  and  children — had  been  killed 
there.  But,  still,  other  women  were  chatting  together 
through  broken  window-panes,  and  children  were  staring 
into  little  shops  (only  a  few  yards  away  from  broken  roofs 
and  shell-broken  walls)  where  Christmas  toys  were  on 
sale. 

A  wizened  boy,  in  a  pair  of  soldier's  boots — a  French 
Hop  o'  My  Thumb  in  the  giant's  boots — was  gazing  wist- 
fully at  some  tin  soldiers,  and  inside  the  shop  a  real 
soldier,  not  a  bit  like  the  tin  one,  was  buying  some  Christ- 
mas cards  worked  by  a  French  artist  in  colored  wools 
for  the  benefit  of  English  Tommies,  with  the  aid  of  a 
dictionary.  Other  soldiers  read  their  legends  and  laughed 
at  them:  "My  heart  is  to  you."  "Good  luck."  "To 
the  success!"     "Remind  France." 

The  man  who  was  buying  the  cards  fumbled  with 
French  money,  and  looked  up  sheepishly  at  me,  as  if  shy 
of  the  sentiment  upon  which  he  was  spending  it. 

"The  people  at  home  will  be  glad  of  'em,"  he  said. 
"I  s'pose  one  can't  forget  Christmas  altogether.  Though 
it  ain't  the  same  thing  out  here." 

Going  in  search  of  Christmas,  I  passed  through  a  flooded 
countryside  and  found  only  scenes  of  war  behind  the  Hnes, 
with  gunners  driving  their  batteries  and  limber  down  a 
road  that  had  become  a  river-bed,  fountains  of  spray 
rising  about  their  mules  and  wheels,  military  motor-cars 
lurching  in  the  mud  beyond  the  pave,  despatch-riders 
side-slipping  in  a  wild  way  through  boggy  tracks,  supply- 
columns  churning  up  deep  ruts. 

And  then  into  the  trenches  at  Neuve  Chapelle.  If 
Santa  Claus  had  come  that  way,  remembering  those 
grovv^n-up  boys  of  ours,  the  old  m.an  with  his  white  beard 
must  have  lifted  his  red  gown  high — waist-high — v/hen 
he  waded  up  some  of  the  communication  trenches  to  the 


226  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

firing-lines,  and  he  would  have  staggered  and  slithered, 
now  with  one  top-boot  deep  in  sludge,  now  with  the  other 
slipping  off  the  trench  boards  into  five  feet  of  water,  as 
I  had  to  do,  grasping  with  futile  hands  at  slimy  sand- 
bags to  save  a  headlong  plunge  into  icy  water. 

And  this  old  man  of  peace,  who  loved  all  boys  and  the 
laughter  of  youth,  would  have  had  to  duck  very  low  and 
make  sudden  bolts  across  open  spaces,  where  parapets 
and  earthworks  had  silted  down,  in  order  to  avoid  those 
sniping  bullets  which  came  snapping  across  the  dead 
ground  from  a  row  of  slashed  trees  and  a  few  scarred 
ruins  on  the  edge  of  the  enemy's  lines. 

But  sentiment  of  that  sort  was  out  of  place  in  trenches 
less  than  a  hundred  yards  away  from  men  lying  behind 
rifles  and  waiting  to  kill. 

There  was  no  spirit  of  Christmas  in  the  tragic  desola- 
tion of  the  scenery  of  which  I  had  brief  glimpses  when  I 
stood  here  and  there  nakedly  (I  felt)  in  those  ugly  places, 
w^hen  the  officer  who  was  with  me  said,  "It's  best  to  get 
a  move  on  here,"  and,  "This  road  is  swept  by  machine- 
gun  fire,"  and,  "I  don't  like  this  corner;  it's  quite 
unhealthy." 

But  that  absurd  idea — of  Santa  Claus  in  the  trenches — 
came  into  my  head  several  times,  and  I  wondered  whether 
the  Germans  would  fire  a  whizz-bang  at  him  or  give  a 
burst  of  machine-gun  fire  if  they  caught  the  glint  of  his 
red  cloak. 

Some  of  the  soldiers  had  the  same  idea.  In  the  front- 
line trench  a  small  group  of  Yorkshire  lads  were  chaffing 
one  another. 

"Going  to  hang  your  boots  up  outside  the  dugout?" 
asked  a  lad,  grinning  down  at  an  enormous  pair  of  waders 
belonging  to  a  comrade. 

"  Likely,  ain't  it  ? "  said  the  other  boy.  "  Father  Christ- 
mas would  be  a  bloody  fool  to  come  out  here.  .  .  .  They'd 
be  full  of  water  in  the  morning." 

"You'll  get  some  presents,"  I  said.  "They  haven't 
forgotten  you  at  home." 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  227 

At  that  word  "home"  the  boy  flushed  and  something 
went  soft  in  his  eyes  for  a  moment.  In  spite  of  his  steel 
helmet  and  mud-stained  uniform,  he  was  a  girHsh-looking 
fellow — perhaps  that  was  why  his  comrades  were  chaffing 
him — and  I  fancy  the  thought  of  Christmas  made  him 
yearn  back  to  some  village  in  Yorkshire. 

Most  of  the  other  men  w^ith  w  horn  I  spoke  treated  the 
idea  of  Christmas  with  contemptuous  irony. 

"A  happy  Christmas!"  said  one  of  them,  with  a  laugh. 
"Plenty  of  crackers  about  this  year!  Tom  Smith  ain't 
in  it." 

"And  I  hope  we're  going  to  give  the  Boches  some 
Christmas  presents,"  said  another.  "They  deserve  it,  I 
don't  think!" 

"No  truce  this  year?"  I  asked. 

"A  truce?  .  .  .  We're  not  going  to  allow  any  monkey- 
tricks  on  the  parapets.  To  hell  with  Christmas  charity 
and  all  that  tosh.  We've  got  to  get  on  with  the  war. 
That's  my  motto." 

Other  men  said:  "We  wouldn't  mind  a  holiday. 
We're  fed  up  to  the  neck  with  all  this  muck." 

The  war  did  not  stop,  although  it  was  Christmas  Eve, 
and  the  only  carol  I  heard  in  the  trenches  was  the  loud, 
deep  chant  of  the  guns  on  both  sides,  and  the  shrill  soprano 
of  w^histling  shells,  and  the  rattle  on  the  keyboards  of 
machine-guns.  The  enemy  was  putting  more  shells  into 
a  bit  of  trench  in  revenge  for  a  raid.  To  the  left  some 
shrapnel  shells  were  bursting,  and  behind  the  lines  our 
"heavies"  were  busily  at  work  firing  at  long  range. 

"On  earth  peace,  good-will  toward  men." 

The  message  was  spoken  at  many  a  little  service  on 
both  sides  of  that  long  line  where  great  armies  were  in- 
trenched with  their  death-machines,  and  the  riddle  of 
life  and  faith  was  rung  out  by  the  Christmas  bells  which 
came  clashing  on  the  rain-swept  wind,  with  the  rever- 
beration of  great  guns. 

Through  the  night  our  men  in  the  trenches  stood  in 
their  waders,  and  the  dawn  of  Christmas  Day  was  greeted. 


228  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

not  by  angelic  songs,  but  by  the  splutter  of  rifle-bullets 
all  along  the  line. 

VI 

There  was  more  than  half  a  gale  blowing  on  the  eve  of 
the  new  year,  and  the  wind  came  howling  with  a  savage 
violence  across  the  rain-swept  fields,  so  that  the  first  day 
of  a  fateful  year  had  a  stormy  birth,  and  there  was  no 
peace  on  earth. 

Louder  than  the  wind  was  the  greeting  of  the  guns  to 
another  year  of  war.  I  heard  the  New- Year's  chorus 
when  I  went  to  see  the  last  of  the  year  across  the  battle- 
fields. Our  guns  did  not  let  it  die  in  silence.  It  went 
into  the  tomb  of  the  past,  vsith  all  its  tragic  memories,  to 
thunderous  salvos,  carrying  death  with  them.  The 
"heavies"  were  indulging  in  a  special  strafe  this  New- 
Year's  eve.  As  I  went  down  a  road  near  the  lines  by 
Loos  I  sav/,  from  concealed  positions,  the  flash  of  gun 
upon  gun.  The  air  was  swept  by  an  incessant  rush  of 
shells,  and  the  roar  of  all  this  artillery  stupefied  one's 
sense  of  sound.  All  about  me  in  the  village  of  Annequin, 
through  which  I  walked,  there  was  no  other  sound,  no 
noise  of  human  life.  There  were  no  New- Year's  eve  re- 
joicings among  those  rows  of  miners'  cottages  on  the  edge 
of  the  battlefield.  Half  those  little  red-brick  houses 
were  blown  to  pieces,  and  when  here  and  there  through 
a  cracked  window-pane  I  saw  a  woman's  white  face  peer- 
ing out  upon  me  as  I  passed  I  felt  as  though  I  had  seen 
a  ghost-face  in  some  black  pit  of  hell. 

For  it  was  hellish,  this  place  wrecked  by  high  explosives 
and  always  under  the  fire  of  German  guns.  That  any 
human  being  should  be  there  passed  all  belief.  From  a 
shell-hole  in  a  high  wall  I  looked  across  the  field  of  battle, 
where  many  of  our  best  had  died.  The  Tower  Bridge  of 
Loos  stood  grim  and  gaunt  above  the  sterile  fields. 
Through  the  rain  and  the  mist  loomed  the  long  black 
ridge  of  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette,  where  many  poor  bodies 
lay  in  the  rotting  leaves.     The  ruins  of  llaisnes  and  IIul- 


A  WINTER  OK  DISCONTENT  229 

luch  were  jagged  against  the  sky-line.  And  here,  on  New- 
Year's  eve,  I  saw  no  sign  of  human  hfe  and  heard  no  sound 
of  it,  but  stared  at  the  broad  desolation  and  listened  to 
the  enormous  clangor  of  great  guns. 

Coming  back  that  day  through  Bethune  I  met  some 
very  human  life.  It  was  a  big  party  of  bluejackets  from 
the  Grand  Pleet,  who  had  come  to  see  what  "Tommy" 
was  doing  in  the  war.  They  went  into  the  trenches  and 
saw  a  good  deal,  because  the  Germans  made  a  bombing 
raid  in  that  sector  and  the  naval  men  did  their  little  bit 
by  the  side  of  the  lads  in  khaki,  who  liked  this  visit.  They 
discovered  the  bomb  store  and  opened  such  a  Brock's 
benefit  that  the  enemy  must  have  been  shocked  with 
surprise.  One  young  marine  was  bomb-slinging  for  four 
hours,  and  grinned  at  the  prodigious  memory  as  though 
he  had  had  the  time  of  his  life.  Another  confessed  to 
me  that  he  preferred  rifle-grenades,  which  he  fired  off 
all  night  until  the  dawn.  There  was  no  sleep  in  the  dug- 
outs, and  every  hour  was  a  long  thrill. 

"I  don't  mind  saying,"  said  a  petty  officer  who  had 
fought  in  several  naval  actions  during  the  war  and  is  a 
man  of  mark,  "that  I  had  a  fair  fright  when  I  was  doing 
duty  on  the  fire-step.  '  I  suppose  I've  got  to  look  through 
a  periscope,'  I  said.  'Not  you,'  said  the  sergeant.  *At 
night  you  puts  your  head  over  the  parapet.'  So  over  the 
parapet  I  put  my  head,  and  presently  I  saw  something 
moving  between  the  lines.  My  rifle  began  to  shake. 
Germans!  Moving,  sure  enough,  over  the  open  ground. 
I  fixed  bayonet  and  prepared  for  an  attack.  .  .  .  But  I'm 
blessed  if  it  wasn't  a  swarm  of  rats!" 

The  soldiers  were  glad  to  show  Jack  the  way  about  the 
trenches,  and  some  of  them  played  up  a  little  audaciously, 
as,  for  instance,  when  a  young  fellow  sat  on  the  top  of  the 
parapet  at  dawn. 

"Come  up  and  have  a  look.  Jack,"  he  said  to  one  of 

the  bluejackets. 

"Not  in  these  trousers,  old  mate!"  said  that  young  man. 
IG 


230  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"All  as  cool  as  cucumbers,"  said  a  petty  officer,  "and 
take  the  discomforts  of  trench  life  as  cheerily  as  any  men 
could.  It's  marvelous.  Good  luck  to  them  in  the  new 
year! 

Behind  the  lines  there  was  banqueting  by  men  who 
were  mostly  doomed  to  die,  and  I  joined  a  crowd  of  them 
in  a  hall  at  Tillers  on  that  New- Year's  day. 

They  were  the  heroes  of  Loos — or  some  of  them — 
Camerons  and  Seaforths,  Argyll  and  Sutherland  High- 
landers, Gordons  and  King's  Own  Scottish  Borderers, 
who,  with  the  London  men,  were  first  on  Hill  70  and 
away  to  the  Cite  St.-Auguste.  They  left  many  comrades 
there,  and  their  battalions  have  been  filled  up  with  new 
drafts — of  the  same  type  as  themselves  and  of  the  same 
grit — but  that  day  no  ghost  of  grief,  no  dark  shadow  of 
gloom,  was  upon  any  of  the  faces  upon  which  I  looked 
round  a  festive  board  in  a  long,  French  hall,  to  which 
their  wounded  came  in  those  days  of  the  September 
battle. 

There  were  young  men  there  from  the  Scottish  univer- 
sities and  from  Highland  farms,  fitting  shoulder  to  shoul- 
der in  a  jolly  comradeship  which  burst  into  song  between 
every  mouthful  of  the  feast.  On  the  platform  above  the 
banqueting-board  a  piper  was  playing,  when  I  came  in, 
and  this  hall  in  France  was  filled  with  the  wild  strains  of  it. 

"And  they're  grand,  the  pipec,"  said  one  of  the  Camer- 
ons. "When  I've  been  sae  tired  on  the  march  I  could 
have  laid  doon  an'  dee'd  the  touch  o'  the  pipes  has  fair 
lifted  me  up  agen." 

The  piper  made  way  for  a  Kiltie  at  the  piano,  and  for 
Highlanders,  who  sang  old  songs  full  of  melancholy, 
which  seemed  to  make  the  hearts  of  his  comrades  grow 
glad  as  when  they  helped  him  with  "The  Bonnie,  Bonnie 
Banks  of  Loch  Lomond."  But  the  roof  nearly  flew  off 
the  hall  to  "The  March  of  the  Cameron  Men,"  and  the 
walls  were  greatly  strained  when  the  regimental  marching 
song  broke  at  every  verse  into  wild  Highland  shouts  and 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  231 

the  war-cry  which  was  heard  at  Loos  of  *'Camerons,  for- 
ward!"    "Forward,  Qamerons!" 

"An  Englishman  is  good,"  said  one  of  the  Camerons, 
leaning  over  the  table  to  me,  "and  an  Irishman  is  good, 
but  a  Scot  is  the  best  of  all."  Then  he  struck  the  palm 
of  one  hand  with  the  fist  of  another.  "But  the  London 
men,"  he  said,  with  a  fine,  joyous  laugh  at  some  good 
memory,  "are  as  good  as  any  fighting-men  in  France. 
My  word,  ye  should  have  seen  'em  on  September  25th. 
And  the  London  Irish  were  just  lions!" 

Out  in  the  rain-slashed  street  I  met  the  colonel  of  a 
battalion  of  Argylls  and  Sutherlands,  with  several  of  his 
officers;  a  tall,  thin  officer  with  a  long  stride,  who  was 
killed  when  another  year  had  passed.  He  beckoned  to 
me  and  said:  "I'm  going  the  rounds  of  the  billets  to  wish 
the  men  good  luck  in  the  new  year.  It's  a  strain  on  the 
constitution,  as  I  have  to  drink  their  health  each  time!" 

He  bore  the  strain  gallantly,  and  there  was  something 
noble  and  chivalrous  in  the  way  he  spoke  to  all  his  men, 
gathered  together  in  various  rooms  in  old  Flemish  houses, 
round  plum-pudding  from  home  or  feasts  provided  by 
the  army  cooks.  To  each  group  of  men  he  made  the  same 
kind  of  speech,  thanking  them  from  his  heart  for  all  their 
courage. 

"You  were  thanked  by  three  generals,"  he  said,  "after 
your  attack  at  Loos,  and  you  upheld  the  old  reputation 
of  the  regiment.  I'm  proud  of  you.  And  afterward,  in 
November,  when  you  had  the  devil  of  a  time  in  the 
trenches,  you  stuck  it  splendidly  and  came  out  with  high 
spirits.  I  wish  you  all  a  happy  new  year,  and  whatever 
the  future  may  bring  I  know  I  can  count  on  you." 

In  every  billet  there  were  three  cheers  for  the  colonel, 
and  another  three  for  the  staff  captain,  and  though  the 
colonel  protested  that  he  was  afraid  of  spending  a  night 
in  the  guard-room  (there  were  shouts  of  laughter  at  this), 
he  drank  his  sip  of  neat  whisky,  according  to  the  custom 
of  the  day. 

"Toodle-00,  old  bird!"  said  a  kilted  cockney,  halfway 


212  NOVv^  IT  CAN   RE  TOLD 

up  a  ladder,  on  which  he  swayed  perilously,  being  very 
drunk;  but  the  colonel  did  not  hear  this  famihar  way  of 
address. 

In  many  billets  and  in  many  halls  the  feast  of  Nevv- 
Year's  day  was  kept  in  good  comradeship  by  men  who 
had  faced  death  together,  and  who  in  the  year  that  was 
coming  fought  in  many  battles  and  fell  on  many  fields. 


VII 

The  Canadians  who  were  in  the  Ypres  salient  in  Janu- 
ary, 1916,  and  for  a  long  time  afterward,  had  a  grim  way 
of  fighting.  The  enem.y  never  knew  what  they  might  do 
next.  When  they  were  most  quiet  they  were  most  dan- 
gerous. They  used  cunning  as  well  as  courage,  and  went 
out  on  red-Indian  adventures  over  No  Man's  Land  for 
fierce  and  scientific  slaughter, 

I  remember  one  of  their  early  raids  in  the  salient,  when 
a  big  party  of  them — all  volunteers — went  out  one  night 
with  intent  to  get  through  the  barbed  wire  outside  a 
strong  German  position,  to  do  a  lot  of  killing  there.  They 
had  trained  for  the  job  and  thought  out  every  detail  of 
this  hunting  expedition.  They  blacked  their  faces  so 
that  they  would  not  show  white  in  the  enemy's  flares. 
They  fastened  flash-lamps  to  their  bayonets  so  that  they 
might  see  their  victims.  They  wore  rubber  gloves  to 
save  their  hands  from  being  torn  on  the  barbs  of  the  wire. 

Stealthily  they  crawled  over  No  Man's  Land,  crouch- 
ing in  shell-holes  every  time  a  rocket  rose  and  made  a 
glimmer  of  light.  They  took  their  time  at  the  wire, 
muffling  the  snap  of  it  by  bits  of  cloth.  Reliefs  crawled 
up  with  more  gloves,  and  even  with  tins  of  hot  cocoa. 
Then  through  the  gap  into  the  German  trenches,  and 
there  were  screams  of  German  soldiers,  terror-shaken  by 
the  flash  of  light  in  their  eyes,  and  black  faces  above 
them,  and  bayonets  already  red  with  blood.  It  was 
butcher's  work,  quick  and  skilful,  like  red-Indian  scalp- 
ing.    Thirty  Germans  were  killed  before  the  Canadians 


A  WINTER  OF   DISCONTENT  233 

went  back,  with  only  two  casualties.  .  .  .  The  Germans 
were  horrified  by  this  sudden  slaughter.  They  dared  not 
come  out  on  patrol  work.  Canadian  scouts  crawled 
down  to  them  and  insulted  them,  ingeniously,  vilely,  but 
could  get  no  answer.  Later  they  trained  their  machine- 
guns  on  German  working-parties  and  swept  crossroads 
on  which  supplies  came  up,  and  the  Canadian  sniper,  in 
one  shell-hole  or  another,  lay  for  hours  in  sulky  patience, 
and  at  last  got  his  man.  .  .  .  They  had  to  pay  for  all  this, 
at  Maple  Copse,  in  June  of  '15,  as  I  shall  tell.  But  it  was 
a  vendetta  which  did  not  end  until  the  war  ended,  and 
the  Canadians  fought  the  Germans  with  a  long,  enduring, 
terrible,  skilful  patience  which  at  last  brought  them  to 
Mons  on  the  day  before  armistice. 

I  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  Canadians  from  first  to  last, 
and  on  many  days  of  battle  saw  the  tough,  hard  fighting 
spirit  of  these  men.  Their  generals  believed  in  common 
sense  applied  to  war,  and  not  in  high  mysteries  and  secret 
rites  which  cannot  be  known  outside  the  circle  of  initia- 
tion. I  was  impressed  by  General  Currie,  whom  I  met 
for  the  first  time  in  that  winter  of  191 5-16,  and  wrote 
at  the  time  that  I  saw  in  him  "a  leader  of  men  who  in 
open  warfare  might  win  great  victories  by  doing  the 
common-sense  thing  rapidly  and  decisively,  to  the  surprise 
of  an  enemy  working  by  elaborate  science.  He  would, 
I  think,  astound  them  by  the  simpHcity  of  his  smashing 
stroke."  Those  words  of  mine  were  fulfilled — on  the  day 
when  the  Canadians  helped  to  break  the  Drocourt-Queant 
line,  and  when  they  captured  Cambrai,  with  EngHsh 
troops  on  their  right,  who  shared  their  success.  General 
Currie,  who  became  the  Canadian  Corps  Commander, 
did  not  spare  his  men.  He  led  them  forward  whatever 
the  cost,  but  there  was  something  great  and  terrible  in 
his  simplicity  and  sureness  of  judgment,  and  this  real- 
estate  agent  (as  he  was  before  he  took  to  soldiering)  was 
undoubtedly  a  man  of  strong  ability,  free  from  those 
trammels  of  red  tape  and  tradition  which  swathed  round 
so  many  of  our  own  leaders. 


234  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

He  cut  clean  to  the  heart  of  things,  ruthlessly,  like  a 
surgeon,  and  as  I  watched  that  man,  immense  in  bulk, 
with  a  heavy,  thoughtful  face  and  stern  eyes  that  softened 
a  little  when  he  smiled,  I  thought  of  him  as  Oliver  Crom- 
well. He  was  severe  as  a  disciplinarian,  and  not  beloved 
by  many  men.  But  his  staff-officers,  who  stood  in  awe 
of  him,  knew  that  he  demanded  truth  and  honesty,  and 
that  his  brain  moved  quickly  to  sure  decisions  and  saw 
big  problems  broadly  and  with  understanding.  He  had 
good  men  with  him — mostly  amateurs — but  with  hard 
business  heads  and  the  same  hatred  of  red  tape  and 
niggling  ways  which  belonged  to  their  chief.  So  the 
Canadian  Corps  became  a  powerful  engine  on  our  side 
when  it  had  learned  many  lessons  in  blood  and  tragedy. 
They  organized  their  publicity  side  in  the  same  masterful 
way,  and  were  determined  that  what  Canada  did  the 
world  should  know — and  damn  all  censorship.  They 
bought  up  English  artists,  photographers,  and  writing- 
men  to  record  their  exploits.  With  Lord  Beaverbrook  in 
England  they  engineered  Canadian  propaganda  with 
immense  energy,  and  Canada  believed  her  men  made  up 
the  British  army  and  did  all  the  fighting.  I  do  not 
blame  them,  and  only  wish  that  the  English  soldier  should 
have  been  given  his  share  of  the  honors  that  belonged  to 
him — the  lion's  share. 

VIII 

The  Canadians  were  not  the  only  men  to  go  out  raiding. 
It  became  part  of  the  routine  of  war,  that  quick  killing  in 
the  night,  for  English  and  Scottish  and  Irish  and  Welsh 
troops,  and  some  had  luck  with  it,  and  some  men  liked  it, 
and  to  others  it  was  a  horror  which  they  had  to  do,  and 
always  it  was  a  fluky,  nervy  job,  when  any  accident  might 
lead  to  tragedy. 

I  remember  one  such  raid  by  the  12th  West  Yorks  in 
January  of  '15,  which  was  typical  of  many  others^,  before 
raids  developed  into  minor  battles,  with  all  the  guns  at 
work. 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  235 

There  were  four  lieutenants  who  drew  up  the  plan  and 
called  for  volunteers,  and  it  was  one  of  these  who  went 
out  first  and  alone  to  reconnoiter  the  ground  and  to  find 
the  best  way  through  the  German  barbed  wire.  He  just 
slipped  out  over  the  parapet  and  disappeared  into  the 
darkness.  When  he  came  back  he  had  a  wound  in  the 
wrist — it  was  just  the  bad  luck  of  a  chance  bullet — but 
brought  in  valuable  knowledge.  He  had  found  a  gap  in 
the  enemy's  wire  which  would  give  an  open  door  to  the 
party  of  visitors.  He  had  also  tested  the  wire  farther 
along,  and  thought  it  could  be  cut  without  much  bother. 

"Good  enough!"  was  the  verdict,  and  a  detachment 
started  out  for  No  Man's  Land,  divided  into  two  parties. 

The  enemy  trenches  were  about  one  hundred  yards 
away,  which  seems  a  mile  in  the  darkness  and  the  loneli- 
ness of  the  dead  ground.  At  regular  intervals  the  Ger- 
man rockets  flared  up  so  that  the  hedges  and  wire  and 
parapets  along  their  line  were  cut  out  ink-black  against 
the  white  illumination,  and  the  two  patrols  of  Yorkshire- 
men  who  had  been  crawling  forward  stopped  and 
crouched  lower  and  felt  themselves  revealed,  and  then 
when  darkness  hid  them  again  went  on. 

The  party  on  the  left  were  now  close  to  the  German 
wire  and  under  the  shelter  of  a  hedge.  They  felt  their 
way  along  until  the  two  subalterns  who  were  leading 
came  to  the  gap  which  had  been  reported  by  the  first 
explorer.  They  listened  intently  and  heard  the  German 
sentry  stamping  his  feet  and  pacing  up  and  down.  Pres- 
ently he  began  to  whistle  softly,  utterly  unconscious  of 
the  men  so  close  to  him — so  close  now  that  any  stumble, 
any  clatter  of  arms,  any  word  spoken,  would  betray  them. 

The  two  lieutenants  had  their  revolvers  ready  and 
crept  forward  to  the  parapet.  The  men  had  to  act  ac- 
cording to  instinct  now,  for  no  order  could  be  given,  and 
one  of  them  found  his  instinct  led  him  to  clamber  right 
into  the  German  trench  a  few  yards  away  from  the  sentry, 
but  on  the  other  side  of  the  traverse.  He  had  not  been 
there  long,  holding  his  breath  and  crouching  Hke  a  wolf, 


236  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

before  footsteps  came  toward  him  and  he  saw  the  ghnt 
of  a  cigarette. 

It  was  a  German  officer  going  his  round.  The  York- 
shire boy  sprang  on  to  tiie  parapet  again,  and  lay  across 
it  with  his  head  toward  our  hues  and  his  legs  dangling 
in  the  German  trench.  The  German  officer's  cloak 
brushed  his  heels,  but  the  boy  twisted  round  a  little  and 
stared  at  him  as  he  passed.  But  he  passed,  and  presently 
the  sentry  began  to  whistle  again,  some  old  German  tune 
which  cheered  him  in  his  loneliness.  He  knew  nothing 
of  the  eyes  watching  him  through  the  darkness  nor  of  his 
nearness  to  death. 

It  was  the  first  lieutenant  who  tried  to  shoot  him.  But 
the  revolver  was  muddy  and  would  not  fire.  Perhaps  a 
click  disturbed  the  sentry.  Anyhow,  the  moment  had 
come  for  quick  work.  It  was  the  sergeant  who  sprang 
upon  him,  down  from  the  parapet  with  one  pounce.  A 
frightful  shriek,  with  the  shrill  agony  of  a  boy's  voice, 
v/ailed  through  the  silence.  The  sergeant  had  his  hand 
about  the  German  boy's  throat  and  tried  to  strangle  him 
and  to  stop  another  dreadful  cry. 

The  second  officer  made  haste.  He  thrust  his  revolver 
close  to  the  struggling  sentry  and  shot  him  dead,  through 
the  neck,  just  as  he  was  falling  limp  from  a  blow  on  the 
head  given  by  the  butt-end  of  the  weapon  which  had 
failed  to  fire.  The  bullet  did  its  work,  though  it  passed 
through  the  sergeant's  hand,  which  had  still  held  the  man 
by  the  throat.  The  alarm  had  been  raised  and  German 
soldiers  were  running  to  the  rescue. 

"Quick!"  said  one  of  the  officers. 

There  was  a  wild  scramble  over  the  parapet,  a  drop 
into  the  wet  ditch,  and  a  race  for  home  over  No  Man's 
Land,  which  was  white  under  the  German  flares  and 
noisy  with  the  waspish  note  of  bullets. 

The  other  party  were  longer  away  and  had  greater 
trouble  to  find  a  way  through,  but  they,  too,  got  home, 
with  one  officer  badly  wounded,  and  wonderful  luck  to 
escape  so  lightly.    The  enemy  suffered  from  "the  jumps" 


A  WINTER  OF   DISCONTENT  237 

for  several  nights  afterward,  and  threw  bombs  into  their 
own  barbed  wire,  as  though  the  Enghsh  were  out  there 
again.  And  at  the  sound  of  those  bombs  the  West  Yorks 
laughed  all  along  their  trenches. 


IX 

It  was  always  astonishing,  though  afterward  familiar 
in  those  battlefields  of  Flanders,  to  find  oneself  in  the 
midst  of  so  many  nationalities  and  races  and  breeds  of 
men  belonging  to  that  British  family  of  ours  which  sent 
its  sons  to  sacrifice.  In  those  trenches  there  were  all 
the  ways  of  speech,  all  the  sentiment  of  place  and  history, 
all  the  creeds  and  local  customs  and  songs  of  old  tradition 
which  belong  to  the  mixture  of  our  blood  wherever  it  is 
found  about  the  world. 

The  skirl  of  the  Scottish  bagpipes  was  heard  through 
all  the  years  of  war  over  the  Flemish  marshlands,  and 
there  were  Highlanders  and  Lowlanders  with  every  dialect 
over  the  border.  In  one  line  of  trenches  the  German 
soldiers  listened  to  part-songs  sung  in  such  trained  har- 
mony that  it  was  as  if  a  battalion  of  opera-singers  had 
come  into  the  firing-line.  The  Welshmen  spoke  their 
own  language.  For  a  time  no  officer  received  his  com- 
mand unless  he  spoke  it  as  fluently  as  running  water  by 
Aberystwyth,  and  even  orders  were  given  in  this  tongue 
until  a  few  Saxons,  discovered  in  the  ranks,  failed  to  form 
fours  and  know  their  left  hand  from  their  right  in 
Welsh. 

The  French-Canadians  did  not  need  to  learn  the  lan- 
guage of  the  peasants  in  these  market  towns.  Soldiers 
from  Somerset  used  many  old  Saxon  words  which  puzzled 
their  cockney  friends,  and  the  Lancashire  men  brought 
the  northern  bur  with  them  and  the  grit  of  the  northern 
spirit.  And  Ireland,  though  she  would  not  have  con- 
scription, sent  some  of  the  bravest  of  her  boys  out  there, 
and  in  all  the  bloodiest  battles  since  that  day  at  Mons 
the  old  fighting  quahties  of  the  Irish  race  shone  brightly 


238  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

again,  and  the  blood  of  her  race  has  been  poured  out 
upon  these  tragic  fields. 

One  of  the  villages  behind  the  lines  of  Arras  was  so 
crowded  with  Irish  boys  at  the  beginning  of  'i6  that  I 
found  it  hard  not  to  believe  that  a  part  of  old  Ireland 
itself  had  found  its  way  to  Flanders.  In  one  old  out- 
house the  cattle  had  not  been  evicted.  Twelve  Flemish 
cows  lay  cuddled  up  together  on  the  ground  floor  in  damp 
straw,  which  gave  out  a  sweet,  sickly  stench,  while  the 
Irish  soldiers  Hved  upstairs  in  the  loft,  to  which  they 
climbed  up  a  tall  ladder  with  broken  rungs. 

I  went  up  the  ladder  after  them — it  was  very  shaky  in 
the  middle — and,  putting  my  head  through  the  loft,  gave 
a  greeting  to  a  number  of  dark  figures  lying  in  the  same 
kind  of  straw  that  I  had  smelled  downstairs.  One  boy  was 
sitting  with  his  back  to  the  beams,  playing  a  penny 
whistle  very  softly  to  himself,  or  perhaps  to  the  rats  under 
the  straws. 

"The  craytures  are  that  bold,"  said  a  boy  from  County 
Cork,  *'that  when  we  first  came  in  they  sat  up  smilin' 
and  sang  *God  Save  Ireland.'  Bedad,  and  it's  the  truth 
I'm  after  tellin'  ye." 

The  billets  were  wet  and  dirty.  But  it  was  good  to 
be  away  from  the  shells,  even  if  the  rain  came  through 
the  beams  of  a  broken  roof  and  soaked  through  the  plaster 
of  wattle  walls.  The  Irish  boys  were  good  at  making 
wood  fires  in  these  old  barns  and  pigsties,  if  there  were 
a  few  bricks  about  to  make  a  hearth,  and,  sure,  a  baked 
potato  was  no  Protestant  with  a  grudge  against  the 
Pope. 

There  were  no  such  luxuries  in  the  trenches  when  the 
Dublins  and  the  Munsters  were  up  in  the  firing-line  at  the 
HohenzoUern.  The  shelling  was  so  violent  that  it  was 
difficult  to  get  up  the  supplies,  and  some  of  the 
boys  had  to  fall  back  on  their  iron  rations.  It  was 
the  only  complaint  which  one  of  them  made  when  I 
asked  him  what  he  thought  of  his  first  experience  under 
fire. 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  239 

"It  was  all  right,  sorr,  and  not  so  bad  as  Fd  been  after 
thinking,  if  only  my  appetite  had  not  been  bigger  than 
my  belt,  at  all." 

The  spirit  of  these  Irishmen  was  shown  by  some  who 
had  just  come  out  from  the  old  country  to  join  their 
comrades  in  the  firing-line.  When  the  Germans  put  over 
a  number  of  shells,  smashing  the  trenches  and  wounding 
men,  the  temper  of  the  lads  broke  out,  and  they  wanted 
to  get  over  the  parapet  and  make  a  dash  for  the  enemy. 
"'Twould  taych  him  a  lesson,"  they  told  their  officers, 
who  had  some  trouble  in  restraining  them. 

These  newcomers  had  to  take  part  in  the  digging  which 
goes  on  behind  the  lines  at  night — out  in  the  open,  with- 
out the  shelter  of  a  trench.  It  was  nervous  work,  espe- 
cially when  the  German  flares  went  up,  silhouetting  their 
figures  on  the  sky-line,  and  when  one  of  the  enemy's 
machine-guns  began  to  chatter.  But  the  Irish  boys  found 
the  heart  for  a  jest,  and  one  of  them,  resting  on  his  spade 
a  moment,  stared  over  to  the  enemy's  lines  and  said, 
"May  the  old  devil  take  the  spalpeen  who  works  that 
typewriter!" 

It  was  a  scaring,  nerve-racking  time  for  those  who  had 
come  fresh  to  the  trenches,  some  of  those  boys  who  had 
not  guessed  the  realities  of  war  until  then.  But  they 
came  out  proudly — "with  their  tails  up,"  said  one  of  their 
officers — after  their  baptism  of  fire. 

The  drum-and-fife  band  of  the  Munsters  was  practising 
in  an  old  barn  on  the  wayside,  and  presently,  in  honor  of 
visitors — who  were  myself  and  another — the  pipers  were 
sent  for.  They  were  five  tall  lads,  who  came  striding 
down  the  street  of  Flemish  cottages,  with  the  windbags 
under  their  arms,  and  then,  with  the  fife  men  sitting  on 
the  straw  around  them  and  the  drummers  standing  with 
their  sticks  ready,  they  took  their  breath  for  "the  good 
old  Irish  tune"  demanded  by  the  captain. 

It  was  a  tune  which  men  could  not  sing  very  safely  in 
Irish  yesterdays,  and  it  held  the  passion  of  many  rebellious 
hearts  and  the  yearning  of  them. 


240  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Oh,   Paddy  dear,  and  did  you   hear  the  news  that's  going   round? 
The  shamrock  is  forbid  by  law  to  grow  on  Irish  ground. 

She's  the  most  distressful  country  that  ever  yet  was  seen; 
They're  hanging  men  and  women  there  for  wearing  of  the  green. 

Then  the  pipers  played  the  "March  of  O'Neill,"  a  wild 
old  air  as  shrill  and  fierce  as  the  spirit  of  the  men  who 
came  with  their  Irish  battle-cries  against  Elizabeth's  pike- 
men  and  Cromwell's  Ironsides. 

I  thought  then  that  the  lads  who  still  stayed  back  in 
Ireland,  and  the  old  people  there,  would  have  been  glad 
to  stand  with  me  outside  that  Flemish  barn  and  to  hear 
the  old  tunes  of  their  race  played  by  the  boys  who  were 
out  there  fighting. 

I  think  they  would  have  wept  a  little,  as  I  saw  tears 
in  the  eyes  of  an  Irish  soldier  by  my  side,  for  it  was  the 
spirit  of  Ireland  herself,  with  all  her  poetry,  and  her 
valor,  and  her  faith  in  liberty,  which  came  crying  from 
those  pipes,  and  I  wished  that  the  sound  of  them  could 
carry  across  the  sea. 

That  was  a  year  before  I  saw  the  Irish  battalions  come 
out  of  Guichy,  a  poor  remnant  of  the  strength  that  had 
gone  in,  all  tattered  and  torn,  and  caked  with  the  filth 
of  battle,  and  hardly  able  to  stagger  along.  But  they 
pulled  themselves  up  a  little,  and  turned  eyes  left  when 
they  passed  their  brigadier,  who  called  out  words  of 
praise  to  them. 

It  was  more  than  a  year  later  than  that  when  I  saw  the 
last  of  them,  after  a  battle  in  Flanders,  when  they  were 
massacred,  and  lay  in  heaps  round  German  redoubts,  up 
there  in  the  swamps. 


Early  in  the  morning  of  February  23d  there  was  a 
clear  sky  with  a  glint  of  sun  in  it,  and  airplanes  were  aloft 
as  though  it  would  be  a  good  flying-day.  But  before  mid- 
day the  sky  darkened  and  snow  began  to  fall,  and  then  it 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  241 

snowed  steadily  for  hours,  so  that  all  the  fields  of  Flanders 
were  white. 

There  was  a  strange,  new  beauty  in  the  war  zone 
which  had  changed  all  the  pictures  of  war  by  a  white 
enchantment.  The  villages  where  our  soldiers  were 
billeted  looked  as  though  they  were  expecting  a  visit  from 
Santa  Claus.  The  snow  lay  thick  on  the  thatch  and  in 
soft,  downy  ridges  on  the  red-tiled  roofs.  It  covered, 
with  its  purity,  the  rubbish  heaps  in  Flemish  farmyards 
and  the  old  oak  beams  of  barns  and  sheds  where  British 
soldiers  made  their  beds  of  straw.  Away  over  the  lonely 
country  which  led  to  the  trenches,  every  furrow  in  the 
fields  was  a  thin  white  ridge,  and  the  trees,  which  were 
just  showing  a  shimmer  of  green,  stood  ink-black  against 
the  drifting  snow-clouds,  with  a  long  white  streak  down 
each  tall  trunk  on  the  side  nearest  to  the  wind.  The  old 
windmills  of  Flanders  which  looked  down  upon  the 
battlefields  had  been  touched  by  the  softly  falHng  flakes, 
so  that  each  rib  of  their  sails  and  each  rung  of  their  lad- 
ders and  each  plank  of  their  ancient  timbers  was  outlined 
like  a  frosty  cobweb. 

Along  the  roads  of  war  our  soldiers  tramped  through 
the  blizzard  with  ermine  mantles  over  their  mackintosh 
capes,  and  mounted  men  with  their  heads  bent  to  the 
storm  were  like  white  knights  riding  through  a  white 
wilderness.  The  long  columns  of  motor-lorries,  the  gun- 
limbers  drawn  up  by  their  batteries,  the  field  ambulances 
by  the  clearing  hospitals,  were  all  cloaked  in  snow,  and 
the  tramp  and  traffic  of  an  army  were  hushed  in  the 
great  quietude. 

In  the  trenches  the  snow  fell  thickly  and  made  white 
pillows  of  the  piled  sand-bags  and  snow-men  of  sentries 
standing  in  the  shelter  of  the  traverses.  The  tarpaulin 
roofs  and  timbered  doorways  of  dugouts  were  so  changed 
by  the  snowflakes  that  they  seemed  the  dwelling-places 
of  fairy  folks  or,  at  least,  of  Pierrot  and  Columbine  in  a 
Christmas  hiding-place,  and  not  of  soldiers  stamping  their 
feet  and  blowing  on  their  fingers  and  keeping  their  rifles  dry. 


242  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

In  its  first  glamour  of  white  the  snow  gave  a  beauty 
even  to  No  Man's  Land,  making  a  lace-work  pattern  of 
barbed  wire,  and  lying  very  softly  over  the  tumbled  ground 
of  mine-fields,  so  that  all  the  ugliness  of  destruction  and 
death  was  hidden  under  this  canopy.  The  snowflakes 
fluttered  upon  stark  bodies  there,  and  shrouded  them 
tenderly.  It  was  as  though  all  the  doves  of  peace  were 
flying  down  to  fold  their  wings  above  the  obscene  things 
of  war. 

For  a  little  while  the  snow  brought  something  like 
peace.  The  guns  were  quieter,  for  artillery  observation 
was  impossible.  There  could  be  no  sniping,  for  the 
scurrying  flakes  put  a  veil  between  the  trenches.  The 
airplanes  which  went  up  in  the  morning  came  down  quickly 
to  the  powdered  fields  and  took  shelter  in  their  sheds.  A 
great  hush  was  over  the  war  zone,  but  there  was  some- 
thing grim,  suggestive  of  tragic  drama,  in  this  silent 
countryside,  so  white  even  in  the  darkness,  where  milHons 
of  men  were  waiting  to  kill  one  another. 

Behind  the  lines  the  joke  of  the  snow  was  seen  by 
soldiers,  who  were  quick  to  see  a  chance  of  fun.  Men 
who  had  been  hurling  bombs  in  the  Ypres  salient  bom- 
barded one  another  with  hand-grenades,  which  burst 
noiselessly  except  for  the  shouts  of  laughter  that  sig- 
naled a  good  hit. 

French  soldiers  were  at  the  same  game  in  one  village 
I  passed,  where  the  snow-fight  was  fast  and  furious,  and 
some  of  our  officers  led  an  attack  upon  old  comrades  with 
the  craft  of  trappers  and  an  expert  knowledge  of  enfilade 
fire.  The  white  peace  did  not  last  long.  The  ermine 
mantle  on  the  battlefield  was  stained  by  scarlet  patches 
as  soon  as  men  could  see  to  fight  again. 

XI 

For  some  days  in  that  February  of  1916  the  war  cor- 
respondents in  the  Chateau  of  Tilques,  from  which  they 
made  their  expeditions  to  the  line,  were  snowed  up  like 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  243 

the  army  round  them.  Not  even  the  motor-cars  could 
move  through  that  snow  which  drifted  across  the  roads. 
We  sat  indoors  talking — high  treason  sometimes — pon- 
dering over  the  problem  of  a  war  from  which  there  seemed 
no  way  out,  becoming  irritable  with  one  another's  com- 
pany, becoming  passionate  in  argument  about  the  ethics 
of  war,  the  purpose  of  man,  the  gospel  of  Christ,  the 
guilt  of  Germany,  and  the  dishonesty  of  British  politi- 
cians. Futile,  foolish  arguments,  while  men  were  being 
killed  in  great  numbers,  as  daily  routine,  without  result! 

Officers  of  a  division  billeted  nearby  came  in  to  dine 
with  us,  some  of  them  generals  with  elaborate  theories 
on  war  and  a  passionate  hatred  of  Germany,  seeing  no 
other  evil  in  the  world;  some  of  them  brigadiers  with 
tales  of  appalling  brutality  (which  caused  great  laughter), 
some  of  them  battalion  officers  with  the  point  of  view  of 
those  who  said,  " M oritur i  te  salua^it!" 

There  was  one  whose  conversation  I  remember  (having 
taken  notes  of  it  before  I  turned  in  that  night).  It  was 
a  remarkable  conversation,  summing  up  many  things  of 
the  same  kind  which  I  had  heard  in  stray  sentences  by 
other  officers,  and  month  by  month,  years  afterward, 
heard  again,  spoken  with  passion.  This  officer  who  had 
come  out  to  France  in  1914  and  had  been  fighting  ever 
since  by  a  luck  which  had  spared  his  life  when  so  many 
of  his  comrades  had  fallen  round  him,  did  not  speak  with 
passion.  He  spoke  with  a  bitter,  mocking  irony.  He 
said  that  G.  H.  Q.  was  a  close  corporation  in  the  hands  of 
the  military  clique  who  had  muddled  through  the  South 
African  War,  and  were  now  going  to  muddle  through  a 
worse  one.  They  were,  he  said,  intrenched  behind  im- 
pregnable barricades  of  old,  moss-eaten  traditions,  red 
tape,  and  caste  privilege.  They  were,  of  course,  patriots 
who  believed  that  the  Empire  depended  upon  their  sys- 
tem. They  had  no  doubt  of  their  inherent  right  to  con- 
duct the  war,  which  was  "their  war,"  without  interference 
or  criticism  or  publicity.  They  spent  many  hours  of 
the  days  and  nights  in  writing  letters  to  one  another,  and 


244  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

those  who  wrote  most  letters  received  most  decorations, 
and  felt,  vvith  a  patriotic  fire  within  their  breasts,  that 
they  were  getting  on  with  the  war. 

Within  their  close  corporation  there  were  rivalries,  in- 
trigues, perjuries,  and  treacheries  like  those  of  a  medieval 
court.  Each  general  and  staff-officer  had  his  followers 
and  his  sycophants,  who  jostled  for  one  another's  jobs, 
fawned  on  the  great  man,  flattered  his  vanity,  and  made 
him  believe  in  his  omniscience.  Among  the  General 
Staff  there  were  various  grades— G.  S.  O.  I,  G.  S.  O.  II, 
G.  S.  O.  Ill,  and  those  in  the  lower  grades  fought  for  a 
higher  grade  with  every  kind  of  artfulness,  and  diplo- 
macy and  back-stair  influence.  They  worked  late  into  the 
night.  That  is  to  say,  they  went  back  to  their  offices 
after  dining  at  mess — ^"so  frightfully  busy,  you  know,  old 
man!" — and  kept  their  lights  burning,  and  smoked  more 
cigarettes,  and  rang  one  another  up  on  the  telephone  with 
futile  questions,  and  invented  new  ways  of  preventing 
something  from  being  down  somewhere.  The  war  to 
them  was  a  far-off  thing  essential  to  their  way  of  life,  as 
miners  in  the  coal-fields  are  essential  to  statesmen  in 
Downing  Street,  especially  in  cold  weather.  But  it  did 
not  touch  their  souls  or  their  bodies.  They  did  not  see 
its  agony,  or  imagine  it,  or  worry  about  it.  They  were 
always  cheerful,  breezy,  bright  with  optimism.  They 
made  a  little  work  go  a  long  way.  They  were  haughty 
and  arrogant  with  subordinate  officers,  or  at  the  best 
affable  and  condescending,  and  to  superior  officers  they 
said,  "Yes,  sir,"  "No,  sir,"  "Quite  so,  sir,"  to  any  state- 
ment, however  absurd  in  its  ignorance  and  dogmatism. 
If  a  major-general  said,  "Wagner  was  a  mountebank  in 
music,"  G.  S.  O.  Ill,  who  had  once  studied  at  Munich, 
said,  "Yes,  sir,"  or,  "You  think  so,  sir.^  Of  course  you're 
right." 

If  a  lieutenant-colonel  said,  "Browning  was  not  a  poet," 
a  staff  captain,  who  had  read  Browning  at  Cambridge 
with  passionate  admiration,  said:  "I  quite  agree  with  you, 
sir.     And  who  do  you  think  was  a  poet,  sir?" 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  245 

It  was  the  army  system.  The  opinion  of  a  superior 
officer  was  correct,  always.  It  did  not  admit  of  con- 
tradiction. It  was  not  to  be  criticized.  Its  ignorance 
was  wisdom. 

G.  H.  Q.  lived,  said  our  guest,  in  a  world  of  its  own, 
rose-colored,  remote  from  the  ugly  things  of  war.  They 
had  heard  of  the  trenches,  yes,  but  as  the  Wesc  End  hears 
of  the  East  End — a  nasty  place  where  common  people 
lived.  Occasionally  they  visited  the  trenches  as  society 
folk  go  slumming,  and  came  back  proud  of  having  seen 
a  shell  burst,  having  braved  the  lice  and  the  dirt. 

"The  trenches  are  the  slums,"  said  our  guest.  "We 
are  the  Great  Unwashed.     We  are  the  Mud-larks." 

There  was  a  trench  in  the  salient  called  J.  3.  It  was 
away  out  in  advance  of  our  lines.  It  was  not  connected 
with  our  own  trench  system.  It  had  been  left  derelict 
by  both  sides  and  was  a  ditch  in  No  Man's  Land.  But 
our  men  were  ordered  to  hold  it — "to  save  sniping."  A 
battalion  commander  protested  to  the  Headquarters  Staff. 
There  was  no  object  in  holding  J.  3.  It  was  a  target  for 
German  guns  and  a  temptation  to  German  miners. 

"J.  3,"  came  the  staff  command,  "must  be  held  until 
further  orders." 

We  lost  five  hundred  men  in  holding  it.  The  trench 
and  all  in  it  were  thrown  up  by  mines.  Among  those 
killed  was  the  Hon.  Lyndhurst  Bruce,  the  husband  of 
Camille  Clifford,  with  other  husbands  of  women  unknown. 

Our  guest  told  the  story  of  the  massacre  in  Neuve 
Chapelle.  "This  is  a  death  sentence,"  said  the  officers 
who  were  ordered  to  attack.  But  they  attacked,  and 
died,  with  great  gallantry,  as  usual. 

"In  the  slums,"  said  our  guest,  "we  are  expected  to 
die  if  G.  H.  Q.  tells  us  so,  or  if  the  corps  arranges  our 
funeral.     And  generally  we  do." 

That  night,  when  the  snow  lay  on  the  ground,  I  listened 
to  the  rumbling  of  the  gunning  away  in  the  salient,  and 
seemed  to  hear  the  groans  of  men  at  Hooge,  at  St.-Eloi, 
in  other  awful  places.     The  irony  of  that  guest  of  ours 


246  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

was  frightful.  It  was  bitter  beyond  justice,  though  with 
truth  in  the  mockery,  the  truth  of  a  soul  shocked  by  the 
waste  of  life  and  heroism;  .  .  .  when  I  met  him  later  in 
the  war  he  was  on  the  staff. 


XII 

The  world — our  side  of  it — held  its  breath  and  felt  its 
own  heart-beat  when,  in  February  of  that  year  '15,  the 
armies  of  the  German  Crown  Prince  launched  their  offen- 
sive against  the  French  at  Verdun.  It  was  the  biggest 
offensive  since  their  first  drive  down  to  the  Marne;  and 
as  the  days  passed  and  they  hurled  fresh  masses  of  rnen 
against  the  French  and  brought  up  new  guns  to  replace 
their  losses,  there  was  no  doubt  that  in  this  battle  the 
Germans  were  trying  by  all  their  weight  to  smash  their 
way  to  victory  through  the  walls  which  the  French  had 
built  against  them  by  living  flesh  and  spirit. 

"Will  they  hold?"  was  the  question  which  every  man 
among  us  asked  of  his  neighbor  and  of  his  soul. 

On  our  front  there  was  nothing  of  war  beyond  the  daily 
routine  of  the  trenches  and  the  daily  list  of  deaths  and 
wounds.  Winter  had  closed  down  upon  us  in  Flanders, 
and  through  its  fogs  and  snows  came  the  news  of  that 
conflict  round  Verdun  to  the  waiting  army,  which  was 
ours.  The  news  was  bad,  yet  not  the  worst.  Poring 
over  maps  of  the  French  front,  we  in  our  winter  quarters 
saw  with  secret  terror,  some  of  us  with  a  bluster  of  false 
optimism,  some  of  us  with  unjustified  despair,  that  the 
French  were  giving  ground,  giving  ground  slowly,  after 
heroic  resistance,  after  dreadful  massacre,  and  steadily. 
They  were  falling  back  to  the  inner  line  of  forts,  hard 
pressed.  The  Germans,  in  spite  of  monstrous  losses  under 
the  flail  of  the  soixante-quinzesy  were  forcing  their  way 
from  slope  to  slope,  capturing  positions  which  all  but 
dominated  the  whole  of  the  Verdun  heights. 

"If  the  French  break  we  shall  lose  the  war,"  said  the 
pessimist, 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  247 

*'The  French  will  never  lose  Verdun,"  said  the  opti- 
mist. 

"Why  not?  What  are  your  reasons  beyond  that 
cursed  optimism  which  has  been  our  ruin?  Why  an- 
nounce things  Hke  that  as  though  divinely  inspired?  For 
God's  sake  let  us  stare  straight  at  the  facts." 

*'The  Germans  are  losing  the  war  by  this  attack  on 
Verdun.  They  are  just  pouring  their  best  soldiers  into 
the  furnace — burning  the  flower  of  their  army.  It  is  our 
gain.     It  will  lead  in  the  end  to  our  victory." 

**But,  my  dear  good  fool,  what  about  the  French  losses? 
Don't  they  get  killed,  too?  The  German  artillery  is  flog- 
ging them  with  shell-fire  from  seventeen-inch  guns, 
twelve-inch,  nine-inch,  every  bloody  and  monstrous 
engine.  The  French  are  weak  in  heavy  artillery.  For 
that  error,  which  has  haunted  them  from  the  beginning, 
they  are  now  paying  with  their  hfe's  blood — the  life  blood 
of  France." 

"You  are  arguing  on  emotion  and  fear.  Haven't  you 
learned  yet  that  the  attacking  side  always  loses  more  than 
the  defense?" 

"That  is  a  sweeping  statement.  It  depends  on  relative 
man-power  and  gun-power.  Given  a  superiority  of  guns 
and  men,  and  attack  is  cheap.  Defense  is  blown  off  the 
earth.     Otherwise  how  could  we  ever  hope  to  win?" 

"I  agree.  But  the  forces  at  Verdun  are  about  equal, 
and  the  French  have  the  advantage  of  position.  The 
Germans  are  committing  suicide." 

"Humbug!  They  know  what  they  are  doing.  They 
are  the  greatest  soldiers  in  Europe." 

"Led  by  men  with  bone  heads." 

"By  great  scientists." 

"By  the  traditional  rules  of  medievalism.  By  bald- 
headed  vultures  in  spectacles  with  brains  like  penny-in- 
the-slot  machines.  Put  in  a  penny  and  out  comes  a  rule 
of  war.  Mad  egoists!  Colossal  blunderers!  Efficient  in 
all  things  but  knowledge  of  life," 

"Then  God  help  our  British  G.  H.  Q.l" 


248  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

A  long  silence.  The  silence  of  men  who  see  monstrous 
forces  at  work,  in  which  human  lives  are  tossed  like 
straws  in  flame.  A  silence  reaching  back  to  old  ghosts 
of  history,  reaching  out  to  supernatural  aid.  Then  from 
one  speaker  or  another  a  kind  of  curse  and  a  kind  of 
prayer. 

"Hell!..  .God  help  us  all!" 

So  it  was  in  our  mess  where  war  correspondents  and 
censors  sat  down  together  after  futile  journeys  to  dirty 
places  to  see  a  bit  of  shell-fire,  a  few  dead  bodies,  a  line 
of  German  trenches  through  a  periscope,  a  queue  of 
wounded  men  outside  a  dressing  station,  the  survivors  of 
a  trench  raid,  a  bombardment  before  a  "minor  opera- 
tion," a  trench-mortar  "stunt,"  a  new  part  of  the  line. 
.  .  .  Verdun  was  the  only  thing  that  mattered  in  March 
and  April  until  France  had  saved  herself  and  all  of  us. 


XIII 

The  British  army  took  no  part  in  that  battle  of  Verdun, 
but  rendered  great  service  to  France  at  that  time.  By 
February  of  191 5  we  had  taken  over  a  new  line  of  front, 
extending  from  our  positions  round  Loos  southward  to 
the  country  round  Lens  and  Arras.  It  was  to  this  move- 
ment in  February  that  Marshal  Joffre  made  allusion 
when,  in  a  message  to  our  Commander-in-Chief  on  March 
2d,  he  said  that  "the  French  army  remembered  that  its 
recent  call  on  the  comradeship  of  the  British  army  met 
with  an  immediate  and  complete  response." 

By  liberating  an  immense  number  of  French  troops  of 
the  Tenth  Army  and  a  mass  of  artillery  from  this  part  of 
the  front,  we  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  of  great  service 
to  France  at  a  time  when  she  needed  many  men  and  guns 
to  repel  the  assault  upon  Verdun. 

Some  of  her  finest  troops — men  who  had  fought  in 
many  battles  and  had  held  the  trenches  with  most  dogged 
courage — were  here  in  this  sector  of  the  western  front, 
and  many  batteries  of  heavy  and  light  artillery  had  been 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  249 

in  these  positions  since  the  early  months  of  the  war.  It 
was,  therefore,  giving  a  new  and  formidable  strength  to 
the  defense  of  Verdun  when  British  troops  replaced  them 
at  the  time  the  enemy  made  his  great  attack. 

The  French  went  away  from  this  part  of  their  battle- 
front  with  regret  and  emotion.  To  them  it  was  sacred 
ground,  this  line  from  the  long  ridge  of  Notre  Dame  de 
Lorette,  past  Arras,  the  old  capital  of  Artois,  to  Hebu- 
terne,  where  it  linked  up  with  the  British  army  already 
on  the  Somme.  Every  field  here  was  a  graveyard  of 
their  heroic  dead. 

I  went  over  all  the  ground  which  we  now  held,  and  saw 
the  visible  reminders  of  all  that  fighting  which  lay  strewn 
there,  and  told  the  story  of  all  the  struggle  there  by  the 
upheaval  of  earth,  the  wreckage  of  old  trenches,  the  mine- 
craters  and  shell-holes,  and  the  litter  of  battle  in  every 
part  of  that  countryside. 

I  went  there  first — to  the  hill  of  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette 
looking  northward  to  Lens,  and  facing  the  Vimy  Ridge, 
which  the  enemy  held  as  a  strong  barrier  against  us 
above  the  village  of  Souchez  and  Ablain  St.-Nazaire  and 
Neuville  St.-Vaast,  which  the  French  had  captured — 
when  they  were  still  there;  and  I  am  glad  of  that,  for  I 
saw  in  their  places  the  men  who  had  lived  there  and  fought 
there  as  one  may  read  in  the  terrible  and  tragic  narrative 
of  war  by  Henri  Barbusse  in  Le  Feu. 

I  went  on  such  a  day  as  Barbusse  describes.  (Never 
once  did  he  admit  any  fine  weather  to  alleviate  the  suffer- 
ings of  his  comrades,  thereby  exaggerating  their  misery 
somewhat.)  It  was  raining,  and  there  was  a  white,  dank 
mist  through  the  trees  of  the  Bois  de  Bouvigny  on  the 
way  to  the  spur  of  Notre  Dame.  It  clung  to  the  under- 
growth, which  was  torn  by  shell-fire,  and  to  every  blade 
of  grass  growing  rankly  round  the  lips  of  shell-craters 
in  which  were  bits  of  red  rag  or  old  bones,  the  red  panta- 
loons of  the  first  French  armies  who  had  fought  through 
those  woods  in  the  beginning  of  the  war. 

I  roamed  about  a  graveyard  there,  where  shells  had 


250  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

smashed  down  some  of  the  crosses,  but  had  not  damaged 
the  memorial  to  the  men  who  had  stormed  up  the  slope 
of  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette  and  had  fallen  when  their 
comrades  chased  the  Germans  to  the  village  below. 

A  few  shells  came  over  the  hill  as  I  pushed  through  the 
undergrowth  with  a  French  captain,  and  they  burst 
among  the  trees  with  shattering  boughs.  I  remember 
that  little  officer  in  a  steel  helmet,  and  I  could  see  a  Nor- 
man knight  as  his  ancestor  with  a  falcon  as  his  crest. 
He  stood  so  often  on  the  sky-line,  in  full  view  of  the 
enemy  (I  was  thankful  for  the  mist),  that  I  admired  but 
deplored  his  audacity.  Without  any  screen  to  hide  us 
we  walked  down  the  hillside,  gathering  clots  of  greasy 
mud  in  our  boots,  stumbling,  and  once  sprawling.  An- 
other French  captain  joined  us  and  became  the  guide. 

"This  road  is  often  'Marmite,'"  he  said,  "but  I  have 
escaped  so  often  I  have  a  kind  of  fatalism." 

I  envied  his  faith,  remembering  two  eight-inch  shells 
which  a  few  minutes  before  had  burst  in  our  immediate 
neighborhood,  cutting  off  twigs  of  trees  and  one  branch 
with  a  scatter  of  steel  as  sharp  as  knives  and  as  heavy  as 
sledge-hammers. 

Then  for  the  first  time  I  went  into  Ablain  St.-Nazaire, 
which  afterward  I  passed  through  scores  of  times  on  the 
way  to  Vimy  when  that  ridge  was  ours.  The  ragged  ruin 
of  its  church  was  white  and  ghostly  in  the  mist.  On  the 
right  of  the  winding  road  which  led  through  it  was  Sou- 
chez  Wood,  all  blasted  and  riven,  and  beyond  a  huddle  of 
bricks  which  once  was  Souchez  village. 

"Our  men  have  fallen  on  every  yard  of  this  ground," 
said  the  French  officer.  "Their  bodies  lie  thick  below 
the  soil.     Poor  France!     Poor  France!" 

He  spoke  with  tragedy  in  his  eyes  and  voice,  seeing  the 
vision  of  all  that  youth  of  France  which  even  then,  in 
March  of  'i6,  had  been  offered  up  in  vast  sacrifice  to  the 
greedy  devils  of  war.  Rain  was  slashing  down  now, 
beating  a  tattoo  on  the  steel  helmets  of  a  body  of  French 
soldiers  who  stood  shivering  by  the  ruined  walls  while 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  251 

trench-mortars  were  making  a  tumult  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. They  were  the  men  of  Henri  Barbusse — his  com- 
rades. There  were  middle-aged  men  and  boys  mixed 
together  in  a  confraternity  of  misery.  They  were  plas- 
tered with  wet  clay,  and  their  boots  were  enlarged  gro- 
tesquely by  the  clots  of  mud  on  them.  Their  blue  coats 
were  soddened,  and  the  water  dripped  out  of  them  and 
made  pools  round  their  feet.  They  were  unshaven,  and 
their  wet  faces  were  smeared  with  the  soil  of  the  trenches. 

"How  goes  it?"  said  the  French  captain  with  me. 

"It  does  not  go,"  said  the  French  sergeant.  "'Cre 
nom  de  Dieu! — my  men  are  not  gay  to-day.  They  have 
been  wet  for  three  weeks  and  their  bones  are  aching. 
This  place  is  not  a  Bal  Tabourin.  If  we  light  even  a 
little  fire  we  ask  for  trouble.  At  the  sight  of  smoke  the 
dirty  Boche  starts  shelling  again.  So  we  do  not  get  dry, 
and  we  have  no  warmth,  and  we  cannot  make  even  a 
cup  of  good  hot  coffee.  That  dirty  Boche  up  there  on 
Vimy  looks  out  of  his  deep  tunnels  and  laughs  up  his 
sleeve  and  says  those  poor  devils  of  Frenchmen  are  not 
gay  to-day!  That  is  true,  mon  Capitaine.  Mais,  que 
voulez-vous?     C'est  pour  la  France." 

"Qui.     C'est  pour  la  France." 

The  French  captain  turned  away  and  I  could  see  that 
he  pitied  those  comrades  of  his  as  we  went  over  cratered 
earth  to  the  village  of  Neuville  St.-Vaast. 

"Poor  fellows,"  he  said,  presently.  "Not  even  a  cup 
of  hot  coffee! .  .  .  That  is  war!  Blood  and  misery.  Glory, 
yes — afterward!     But  at  what  a  price!" 

So  we  came  to  Neuville  St.-Vaast,  a  large  village  once 
with  a  fine  church,  old  in  history,  a  schoolhouse,  a  town 
hall,  many  little  streets  of  comfortable  houses  under  the 
shelter  of  the  friendly  old  hill  of  Vimy,  and  within  easy 
walk  of  Arras;  then  a  frightful  rubbish  heap  mingled 
with  unexploded  shells,  the  twisted  iron  of  babies'  peram- 
bulators, bits  of  dead  bodies,  and  shattered  farm-carts. 

Two  French  soldiers  carried  a  stretcher  on  which  a 
heavy  burden  lay  under  a  blood-soaked  blanket. 


252  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

**It  is  a  bad  wound?"  asked  the  captain. 

The  men  laid  the  stretcher  down,  breathing  hard,  and 
uncovered  a  face,  waxen,  the  color  of  death.  It  was  the 
face  of  a  handsome  man  with  a  pointed  beard,  breathing 
snuffily  through  his  nose. 

**He  may  live  as  far  as  the  dressing  station,"  said  one 
of  the  Frenchmen.  "It  was  a  trench-mortar  which  blew 
a  hole  in  his  body  just  now,  over  there." 

The  man  jerked  his  head  toward  a  barricade  of  sand- 
bags at  the  end  of  a  street  of  ruin. 

Two  other  men  walked  slowly  toward  us  with  a  queer, 
hobbling  gait.  Both  of  them  were  wounded  in  the  legs, 
and  had  tied  rags  round  their  wounds  tightly.  They 
looked  grave,  almost  sullen,  staring  at  us  as  they  passed, 
with  brooding  eyes. 

"The  German  trench-mortars  are  very  evil,"  said  the 
captain. 

We  poked  about  the  ruins,  raising  our  heads  cautiously 
above  sand-bags  to  look  at  the  German  lines  cut  into  the 
lower  slopes  of  Vimy,  and  thrust  out  by  communication 
trenches  to  the  edge  of  the  village  in  which  we  walked. 
A  boy  officer  came  up  out  of  a  hole  and  saluted  the  cap- 
tain, who  stepped  back  and  said,  in  an  emotional  way: 

"Tiens!     C'est  toi,  Edouard,''" 

"Qui,  men  Capitaine." 

The  boy  had  a  fine,  delicate,  Latin  face,  with  dark  eyes 
and  long,  black  eyelashes. 

"You  are  a  lieutenant,  then  ?  How  does  it  go,  Edouard  ? " 

"It  does  not  go,"  answered  the  boy  like  that  French 
sergeant  in  Ablain  St.-Nazaire.  "This  is  a  bad  place. 
I  lose  my  men  every  day.  There  were  three  killed  yes- 
terday, and  six  wounded.  To-day  already  there  are  two 
killed  and  ten  wounded." 

Something  broke  in  his  voice. 

"Ce  n'est  pas  bon  du  tout,  du  tout!"  ("It  is  not 
good  at  all,  at  all!") 

The  captain  clapped  him  on  the  shoulders,  tried  to 
cheer  him. 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  253 

"Courage,  mon  vieux!'* 

The  rain  shot  down  on  us.  Our  feet  slithered  in 
deep,  greasy  mud.  Sharp  stabs  of  flame  vomited  out  of 
the  slopes  of  Vimy.  There  was  the  high,  long-drawn 
scream  of  shells  in  flight  to  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette. 
Batteries  of  soixante-quinzes  were  firing  rapidly,  and  their 
shells  cut  through  the  air  above  us  like  scythes.  The 
caldron  in  this  pit  of  war  was  being  stirred  up.  Another 
wounded  poilu  was  carried  past  us,  covered  by  a  bloody 
blanket  like  the  other  one.  From  slimy  sand-bags  and 
wet  ruins  came  the  sickening  stench  of  human  corruption. 
A  boot  with  some  pulp  inside  protruded  from  a  mud- 
bank  where  I  stood,  and  there  was  a  human  head,  without 
eyes  or  nose,  black,  and  rotting  in  the  puddle  of  a  shell- 
hole.  Those  were  relics  of  a  battle  on  May  9th,  a  year 
before,  when  swarms  of  boys,  of  the  '16  class,  boys  of 
eighteen,  the  flower  of  French  youth,  rushed  forward  from 
the  crossroads  at  La  Targette,  a  few  hundred  yards  away, 
to  capture  these  ruins  of  Neuville  St.-Vaast.  They  capt- 
ured them,  and  it  cost  them  seven  thousand  in  killed  and 
wounded — at  least  three  thousand  dead.  They  fought 
like  young  demons  through  the  flaming  streets.  They 
fell  in  heaps  under  the  German  barrage-fire.  Machine- 
guns  cut  them  down  as  though  they  were  ripe  corn  under 
the  sickle.  But  these  French  boys  broke  the  Prussian 
Guard  that  day. 

Round  about,  over  all  this  ground  below  Notre  Dame 
de  Lorette  and  the  fields  round  Souchez,  the  French  had 
fought  ferociously,  burrowing  below  earth  at  the  Laby- 
rinth— sapping,  mining,  gaining  a  network  of  trenches, 
an  isolated  house,  a  huddle  of  ruins,  a  German  sap-head, 
by  frequent  rushes  and  the  frenzy  of  those  who  fight 
with  their  teeth  and  hands,  flinging  themselves  on  the 
bodies  of  their  enemy,  below  ground  in  the  darkness,  or 
above  ground  between  ditches  and  sand-bags.  So  for 
something  like  fifteen  months  they  fought,  by  Souchez 
and  the  Labyrinth,  until  in  February  of  '16  they  went 
away  after  greeting  our  khaki  men  who  came  into  their 


254  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

old  places  and  found  the  bones  and  bodies  of  Frenchmen 
there,  as  I  found,  white,  rat-gnawed  bones,  in  disused 
trenches  below  Notre  Dame  when  the  rain  washed  the 
earth  down  and  uncovered  them. 


XIV 

It  was  then,  in  that  February  of  '15,  that  the  city  of 
Arras  passed  for  defense  into  British  hands  and  became 
from  that  time  on  one  of  our  strongholds  on  the  edge  of 
the  battlefields  so  that  it  will  be  haunted  forever  by  the 
ghosts  of  those  men  of  ours  whom  I  saw  there  on  many 
days  of  grim  fighting,  month  after  month,  in  snow  and 
sun  and  rain,  in  steel  helmets  and  stink-coats,  in  muddy 
khaki  and  kilts,  in  queues  of  wounded  (three  thousand 
at  a  time  outside  the  citadel),  in  billets  where  their 
laughter  and  music  were  scornful  of  high  velocities,  in 
the  surging  tide  of  traffic  that  poured  through  to  victory 
that  cost  as  much  sometimes  as  defeat. 

When  I  first  went  into  Arras  during  its  occupation  by 
the  French  I  remembered  a  day,  fifteen  months  before, 
near  the  town  of  St. -Pol  in  Artois,  where  I  was  caught  up 
in  one  of  those  tides  of  fugitives  which  in  those  early 
days  of  war  used  to  roll  back  in  a  state  of  terror  before 
the  German  invasion.  "Where  do  they  come  from?"  I 
asked,  watching  this  long  procession  of  gigs  and  farmers' 
carts  and  tramping  women  and  children.  The  answer  told 
me  everything.     ''They  are  bombarding  Arras,  m'sieur." 

Since  then  "They"  had  never  ceased  to  bombard  Arras. 
From  many  points  of  view,  as  I  had  come  through  the 
countryside  at  night,  I  had  seen  the  flashes  of  shells  over 
that  city  and  had  thought  of  the  agony  inside.  Four 
days  before  I  went  in  first  it  was  bombarded  with  one 
hundred  and  fifty  seventeen-inch  shells,  each  one  of  which 
would  destroy  a  cathedral.  It  was  with  a  sense  of  being 
near  to  death — not  a  pleasant  feeling,  you  understand — • 
that  I  went  into  Arras  for  the  first  time  and  saw  what 
had  happened  to  it. 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  255 

I  was  very  near  to  the  Germans.  No  more  than  ten 
yards  away,  when  I  stood  peering  through  a  hole  in  the 
wall  of  the  Maison  Rouge  in  the  suburb  of  Blangy — it 
was  a  red-brick  villa,  torn  by  shells,  with  a  piano  in  the 
parlor  which  no  man  dared  to  play,  behind  a  shelter  of 
sand-bags — and  no  more  than  two  hundred  yards  away 
from  the  enemy's  lines  when  I  paced  up  and  down  the 
great  railway  station  of  Arras,  where  no  trains  ever 
traveled.  For  more  than  a  year  the  enemy  had  been 
encamped  outside  the  city,  and  for  all  that  time  had  tried 
to  batter  a  way  into  and  through  it.  An  endless  battle 
had  surged  up  against  its  walls,  but  in  spite  of  all  their 
desperate  attacks  no  German  soldier  had  set  foot  inside 
the  city  except  as  a  prisoner  of  war.  Many  thousands 
of  young  F'renchmen  had  given  their  blood  to  save  it. 

The  enemy  had  not  been  able  to  prevail  over  flesh  and 
blood  and  the  spirit  of  heroic  men,  but  he  had  destroyed 
the  city  bit  by  bit.  It  was  pitiful  beyond  all  expression. 
It  was  worse  than  looking  upon  a  woman  whose  beauty 
had  been  scarred  by  bloody  usage. 

For  Arras  was  a  city  of  beauty — a  living  expression  in 
stone  of  all  the  idealism  in  eight  hundred  years  of  history, 
a  most  sweet  and  gracious  place.  Even  then,  after  a 
year's  bombardment,  some  spiritual  exhalation  of  human 
love  and  art  came  to  one  out  of  all  this  ruin.  When  I 
entered  the  city  and  wandered  a  little  in  its  public  gar- 
dens before  going  into  its  dead  heart — the  Grande  Place 
— I  felt  the  strange  survival.  The  trees  here  were  slashed 
by  shrapnel.  Enormous  shell-craters  had  plowed  up  those 
pleasure-grounds.     The  shrubberies  were  beaten  down. 

Almost  every  house  had  been  hit,  every  building  was 
scarred  and  slashed,  but  for  the  most  part  the  city  still 
stood,  so  that  I  went  through  many  long  streets  and  passed 
long  lines  of  houses,  all  deserted,  all  dreadful  in  their 
silence  and  desolation  and  ruin. 

Then  I  came  to  the  cathedral  of  St.-Vaast.  It  was  an 
enormous  building  of  the  Renaissance,  not  beautiful, 
but  impressive  in  its  spaciousness  and  dignity.     Next  to 


2S6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

it  was  the  bishop's  palace,  with  long  corridors  and  halls, 
and  a  private  chapel.  Upon  these  walls  and  domes  the 
fury  of  great  shells  had  spent  itself.  Pillars  as  wide  in 
girth  as  giant  trees  had  been  snapped  off  to  the  base. 
The  dome  of  the  cathedral  opened  with  a  yawning 
chasm.  High  explosives  burst  through  the  walls.  The 
keystones  of  arches  were  blown  out,  and  masses  of 
masonry  were  piled  into  the  nave  and  aisles. 

As  I  stood  there,  rooks  had  perched  in  the  broken 
vaulting  and  flew  with  noisy  wings  above  the  ruined 
altars.  Another  sound  came  like  a  great  beating  of 
wings,  with  a  swifter  rush.  It  was  a  shell,  and  the  vibra- 
tion of  it  stirred  the  crumbling  masonry,  and  bits  of  it 
fell  with  a  clatter  to  the  littered  floor.  On  the  way  to 
the  ruin  of  the  bishop's  chapel  I  passed  a  group  of  stone 
figures.  They  were  the  famous  "Angels  of  Arras"  re- 
moved from  some  other  part  of  the  building  to  what 
might  have  been  a  safer  place. 

Now  they  were  fallen  angels,  mangled  as  they  lay. 
But  in  the  chapel  beyond,  where  the  light  streamed 
through  the  broken  panes  of  stained-glass  windows,  one 
figure  stood  untouched  in  all  this  ruin.  It  was  a  tall 
statue  of  Christ  standing  in  an  attitude  of  meekness  and 
sorrow,  as  though  in  the  presence  of  those  who  crucified 
Him. 

Yet  something  more  wonderful  than  this  scene  of 
tragedy  lived  in  the  midst  of  it.  Yet  there  were  still 
people  living  in  Arras. 

They  lived  an  underground  life,  for  the  most  part, 
coming  up  from  the  underworld  to  blink  in  the  sunlight, 
to  mutter  a  prayer  or  a  curse  or  two,  to  gaze  for  a  moment 
at  any  change  made  by  a  new  day's  bombardment,  and 
then  to  burrow  down  again  at  the  shock  of  a  gun. 

Through  low  archways  just  above  the  pavement,  I 
looked  down  into  some  of  the  deep-vaulted  cellars  where 
the  merchants  used  to  stock  their  wine,  and  saw  old 
women,  and  sometimes  young  women  there,  cooking  over 
little  stoves,  pottering  about  iron  bedsteads,  busy  with 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  257 

domestic  work.  Some  of  them  looked  up  as  I  passed, 
and  my  eyes  and  theirs  stared  into  each  other.  The 
women's  faces  were  Hned  and  their  eyes  sunken.  They 
had  the  look  of  people  who  have  lived  through  many 
agonies  and  have  more  to  suffer. 

Not  all  these  citizens  of  Arras  were  below  ground. 
There  was  a  greengrocer's  shop  still  carrying  on  a  little 
trade.  I  went  into  another  shop  and  bought  some  pict- 
ure post-cards  of  the  ruins  within  a  few  yards  of  it.  The 
woman  behind  the  counter  was  a  comely  soul,  and  laughed 
because  she  had  no  change.  Only  two  days  before  a 
seventeen-inch  shell  had  burst  fifty  yards  or  so  away 
from  her  shop,  which  was  close  enough  for  death.  I 
marveled  at  the  risk  she  took  with  cheerful  smiles.  Was 
it  courage  or  stupidity.'' 

One  of  the  old  women  in  the  street  grasped  my  arm  in 
a  friendly  way  and  called  me  chcr  petit  ami,  and  de- 
scribed how  she  had  been  nearly  killed  a  hundred  times. 
When  I  asked  her  why  she  stayed  she  gave  an  old  wom- 
an's cackling  laugh  and  said,  ^^Que  voulez-vousy  jeune 
ho7n7?ie?"  which  did  not  seem  a  satisfactory  answer.  As 
dusk  crept  into  the  streets  of  Arras  I  saw  small  groups 
of  boys  and  girls.  They  seemed  to  come  out  of  holes  in 
the  ground  to  stare  at  this  Englishman  in  khaki.  "Are 
you  afraid  of  the  shells.''"  I  asked.  They  grimaced  up 
at  the  sky  and  giggled.  They  had  got  used  to  the  hell  of 
it  all,  and  dodged  death  as  they  would  a  man  v/ith  a 
whip,  shouting  with  laughter  beyond  the  length  of  his 
lash.  In  one  of  the  vaulted  cellars  underground,  v/hen 
English  soldiers  first  went  in,  there  lived  a  group  of  girls 
who  gave  them  wine  to  drink,  and  kisses  for  a  franc  or 
tv/o,  and  the  Circe  cup  of  pleasure,  if  they  had  time  to 
stay.  Overhead  shells  were  howling.  Their  city  was 
stricken  with  death.  These  women  lived  like  witches  in 
a  cave— a  strange  and  dreadful  life. 

I  walked  to  the  suburb  of  Blangy  by  way  of  St. -Nicolas 
and  came  to  a  sinister  place.  Along  the  highroad  from 
Arras  to  Douai  was  a  great  factory  of  some  kind — prob- 


2s8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ably  for  beet  sugar — and  then  a  street  of  small  houses 
with  back  yards  and  gardens  much  like  those  in  our  own 
suburbs.  Holes  had  been  knocked  through  the  walls  of 
the  factory  and  houses,  the  gardens  had  been  barricaded 
with  barbed  wire  and  sand-bags,  and  the  passage  from 
house  to  house  and  between  the  overturned  boilers  of  the 
factory  formed  a  communication  trench  to  the  advanced 
outpost  in  the  last  house  held  by  the  French,  on  the 
other  side  of  which  is  the  enemy.  As  we  made  our  way 
through  these  ruined  houses  we  had  to  walk  very  quietly 
and  to  speak  in  whispers.  In  the  last  house  of  all,  which 
was  a  combination  of  fort  and  dugout,  absolute  silence 
was  necessary,  for  there  were  German  soldiers  only  ten 
yards  away,  with  trench-mortars  and  bombs  and  rifles 
always  ready  to  snipe  across  the  walls.  Through  a 
chink  no  wider  than  my  finger  I  could  see  the  red-brick 
ruins  of  the  houses  inhabited  by  the  enemy  and  the  road 
to  Douai.  .  .  .  The  road  to  Douai  as  seen  through  this 
chink  was  a  tangle  of  broken  bricks. 

The  enemy  was  so  close  to  Arras  when  the  French  held 
it  that  there  were  many  places  where  one  had  to  step 
quietly  and  duck  one's  head,  or  get  behind  the  shelter  of 
a  broken  wall,  to  avoid  a  sniper's  bullet  or  the  rattle  of 
bullets  from  a  machine-gun. 

As  I  left  Arras  in  that  November  evening,  darkness 
closed  in  its  ruined  streets  and  shells  were  crashing  over 
the  city  from  French  guns,  answered  now  and  then  by 
enemy  batteries.  But  in  a  moment  of  rare  silence  I 
heard  the  chime  of  a  church  clock.  It  seemed  like  the 
sweet  voice  of  that  old-time  peace  in  Arras  before  the 
days  of  its  agony,  and  I  thought  of  that  solitary  bell 
sounding  above  the  ruins  in  a  ghostly  way. 

XV 

While  we  hung  on  the  news  from  Verdun — it  seemed  as 
though  the  fate  of  the  world  were  in  Fort  Douaumont — 
our  own  lists  of  death  grew  longer. 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  259 

In  the  casualty  clearing  station  by  Poperinghe  more 
mangled  men  lay  on  their  stretchers,  hobbled  to  the 
ambulance-trains,  groped  blindly  with  one  hand  clutch- 
ing at  a  comrade's  arm.  More,  and  more,  and  more, 
with  head  wounds,  and  body  wounds,  with  trench-feet, 
and  gas. 

"0  Christ!"  said  one  of  them  whom  I  knew.  He  had 
been  laid  on  a  swing-bed  in  the  ambulance-train. 

"Now  you  will  be  comfortable  and  happy,"  said  the 
R.  A.  M.  C.  orderly. 

The  boy  groaned  again.  He  was  suffering  intolerable 
agony,  and,  grasping  a  strap,  hauled  himself  up  a  little 
with  a  wet  sweat  breaking  out  on  his  forehead. 

Another  boy  came  along  alone,  with  one  hand  in  a  big 
bandage.  He  told  me  that  it  was  smashed  to  bits,  and 
began  to  cry.     Then  he  smudged  the  tears  away  and  said: 

"I'm  lucky  enough.     I  saw  many  fellows  killed." 

So  it  happened,  day  by  day,  but  the  courage  of  our 
men  endured. 

It  seemed  impossible  to  newcomers  that  life  could  exist 
at  all  under  the  shell-fire  which  the  Germans  flung  over 
our  trenches  and  which  we  flung  over  theirs.  So  it  seemed 
to  the  Irish  battalions  when  they  held  the  lines  round 
Loos,  by  that  Hohenzollern  redoubt  which  was  one  of 
our  little  hells. 

"Things  happened,"  said  one  of  them,  "which  in  other 
times  would  have  been  called  miracles.  We  all  had  hair- 
breadth escapes  from  death."  For  days  they  were  under 
heavy  fire,  with  9.2's  flinging  up  volumes  of  sand  and  earth 
and  stones  about  them.  Then  waves  of  poison-gas.  Then 
trench-mortars  and  bombs. 

"It  seemed  like  years!"  said  one  of  the  Irish  crowd. 
"None  of  us  expected  to  come  out  aHve." 

Yet  most  of  them  had  the  luck  to  come  out  alive  that 
time,  and  over  a  midday  mess  in  a  Flemish  farmhouse 
they  had  hearty  appetites  for  bully  beef  and  fried  pota- 
toes, washed  down  by  thin  red  wine  and  strong  black 
€08*66. 


26o  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Round  Ypres,  and  up  by  Boesinghe  and  Hooge — you 
remember  Hooge? — the  I4t:h,  20th,  and  6th  Divisions 
took  turns  in  wet  ditches  and  in  shell-holes,  with  heavy 
crumps  falling  fast  and  roaring  before  they  burst  like 
devils  of  hell.  On  one  day  there  were  three  hundred 
casualties  in  one  battalion  The  German  gun-fire  length- 
ened, and  men  were  killed  on  their  wa}^  out  to  *'rest"- 
camps  to  the  left  of  the  road  between  Poperinghe  and 
Vlamertinghe. 

On  March  28th  the  Royal  Fusiliers  and  the  Northum- 
berland Fusiliers — the  old  Fighting  Fifth — captured  six 
hundred  yards  of  German  trenches  near  St.-Eloi  and 
asked  for  trouble,  which,  sure  enough,  came  to  them  who 
followed  them.  Their  attack  was  against  a  German 
stronghold  built  of  earth  and  sand-bags  nine  feet  high, 
above  a  nest  of  trenches  in  the  fork  of  two  roads  from  St.- 
Eloi  to  Messines.  They  mined  beneath  this  place  and 
it  blew  up  with  a  roaring  blast  which  flung  up  tons  of  soil 
in  a  black  mass.  Then  the  Fusiliers  dashed  forward, 
flinging  bombs  through  barbed  wire  and  over  sand-bags 
which  had  escaped  the  radius  of  the  mine-burst^n  one 
jumbled  mass  of  human  bodies  in  a  hurry  to  get  on,  to 
kill,  and  to  come  back.  One  German  machine-gun  got 
to  work  on  them.  It  was  knocked  out  by  a  bomb  flung 
by  an  officer  who  saved  his  company.  The  machine- 
gunners  were  bayoneted.  Elsewhere  there  was  chaos  out 
of  which  living  men  came,  shaking  and  moaning. 

I  saw  the  Royal  Fusiliers  and  Northumberland  Fusiliers 
come  back  from  this  exploit,  exhausted,  caked  from  head 
to  foot  in  wet  clay.  Their  steel  helmets  were  covered 
with  sand-bagging,  their  trench-waders,  their  rifles,  and 
smoke  helmets  were  all  plastered  by  wet,  white  earth, 
and  they  looked  a  ragged  regiment  of  scarecrows  gathered 
from  the  fields  of  Prance.  Some  of  them  had  shawls  tied 
about  their  helmets,  and  some  of  them  wore  the  shiny 
black  helmets  of  the  Jaeger  Regiment  and  the  gray  coats 
of  German  soldiers.     They  had  had  luck.     They  had  not 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  261 

left  many  comrades  behind,  and  they  had  come  out  with 
life  to  the  good  world.  Tired  as  they  were,  they  came 
along  as  though  to  carnival.  They  had  proved  their 
courage  through  an  ugly  job.  They  had  done  *'damn 
well,"  as  one  of  them  remarked;  and  they  were  out  of 
the  shell-fire  which  ravaged  the  ground  they  had  taken, 
where  other  men  lay. 

XVI 

At  the  beginning  of  March  there  was  a  little  affair — 
costing  a  lot  of  lives — in  the  neighborhood  of  St.-Eloi,  up 
in  the  Ypres  salient.  It  was  a  struggle  for  a  dirty  hillock 
called  the  Bluff,  which  had  been  held  for  a  long  time  by 
the  3d  Division  under  General  Haldane,  whose  men  were 
at  last  relieved,  after  weary  months  in  the  salient,  by  the 
17th  Division  commanded  by  General  Pitcher.  The  Ger- 
mans took  advantage  of  the  change  in  defense  by  a  sud- 
den attack  after  the  explosion  of  a  mine,  and  the  men  of 
the  17th  Division,  new  to  this  ground,  abandoned  a  posi- 
tion of  some  local  importance. 

General  Haldane  was  annoyed.  It  was  ground  of 
which  he  knew  every  inch.  It  was  ground  which  men  of 
his  had  died  to  hold.  It  was  very  annoying — using  a 
feeble  word — to  battalion  officers  and  men  of  the  3d  Divi- 
sion—Suffolks  and  King's  Own  Liverpools,  Gordons  and 
Royal  Scots — who  had  first  come  out  of  the  salient,  out 
of  its  mud  and  snow  and  slush  and  shell-fire,  to  a  pretty 
village  far  behind  the  lines,  on  the  road  to  Calais,  where 
they  were  getting  back  to  a  sense  of  normal  life  again. 
Sleeping  in  snug  billets,  warming  their  feet  at  wood  fires, 
listening  with  enchantment  to  the  silence  about  them, 
free  from  the  noise  of  artillery.  They  were  hugging  them- 
selves with  the  thought  of  a  month  of  this.  .  .  .  Then  be- 
cause they  had  been  in  the  salient  so  long  and  had  held 
this  line  so  stubbornly,  they  were  ordered  back  again  to 
recapture  the  position  lost  by  new  men. 

After  a  day  of  field  sports  they  were  having  a  boxing- 
match  in  an  old  barn,  very  merry  and  bright,  before  that 
18 


262  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

news  came  to  them.  General  Haldane  had  given  me  a 
quiet  word  about  it,  and  I  watched  the  boxing,  and  the 
faces  of  all  those  men,  crowded  round  the  ring,  with  pity 
for  the  frightful  disappointment  that  was  about  to  fall 
on  them,  like  a  sledge-hammer.  I  knew  some  of  their 
officers — Colonel  Dyson  of  the  Royal  Scots,  and  Captain 
Heathcote,  who  hated  the  war  and  all  its  ways  with  a 
deadly  hatred,  having  seen  much  slaughter  of  men  and 
of  their  own  officers.  Colonel  Dyson  was  the  seven- 
teenth commanding  officer  of  his  battalion,  which  had 
been  commanded  by  every  officer  down  to  second  lieu- 
tenant, and  had  only  thirty  men  left  of  the  original 
crowd.  They  had  been  slain  in  large  numbers  in  that 
"holding  attack"  by  Hooge  on  September  25th,  during 
the  battle  of  Loos,  as  I  have  told.  Now  they  were  "going 
in"  again,  and  were  very  sorry  for  themselves,  but  hid 
their  feelings  from  their  men.  The  men  were  tough  and 
stalwart  lads,  tanned  by  the  wind  and  rain  of  a  foul 
winter,  thinned  down  by  the  ordeal  of  those  months  in 
the  line  under  daily  bouts  of  fire.  In  a  wooden  gallery 
of  the  barn  a  mass  of  them  lay  in  deep  straw,  exchanging 
caps,  whistling,  shouting,  in  high  spirits.  Not  yet  did 
they  know  the  call-back  to  the  salient.  Then  word  was 
passed  to  them  after  the  boxing  finals.  That  night  they 
had  to  march  seven  miles  to  entrain  for  the  railroad 
nearest  to  Ypres.  I  saw  them  march  away,  silently, 
grimly,  bravely,  without  many  curses. 

They  were  to  recapture  the  Bluft,  and  early  on  the 
morning  of  March  2d,  before  dawn  had  risen,  I  went  out 
to  the  salient  and  watched  the  bombardment  which  pre- 
ceded the  attack.  There  was  an  incessant  tumult  of 
guns,  and  the  noise  rolled  in  waves  across  the  flat  country 
of  the  salient  and  echoed  back  from  Kemmel  Hill  and  the 
Wytschaete  Ridge.  There  was  a  white  frost  over  the 
fields,  and  all  the  battle-front  was  veiled  by  a  mist  which 
clung  round  the  villages  and  farmsteads  behind  the  lines 
and  made  a  dense  bank  of  gray  fog  below  the  rising 
ground. 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  263 

This  curtain  was  rent  with  flashes  of  Hght  and  little 
glinting  stars  burst  continually  over  one  spot,  where  the 
Bluff  was  hidden  beyond  Zillebeke  Lake.  When  day- 
break came,  with  the  rim  of  a  red  sun  over  a  clump  of 
trees  in  the  east,  the  noise  of  guns  increased  in  spasms  of 
intensity  like  a  rising  storm.  Many  batteries  of  heavy 
artillery  were  firing  salvos.  Field-guns,  widely  scattered, 
concentrated  their  fire  upon  one  area,  where  their  shells 
were  bursting  with  a  twinkle  of  Hght.  Somewhere  a 
machine-gun  was  at  work  with  sharp,  staccato  strokes, 
like  an  urgent  knocking  at  the  door.  High  overhead  was 
the  song  of  an  airplane  coming  nearer,  with  a  high,  vibrant 
humming.  It  was  an  enemy  searching  through  the  mist 
down  below  him  for  any  movement  of  troops  or  trains. 

It  was  the  76th  Brigade  of  the  3d  Division  which  at- 
tacked at  four  thirty-two  that  morning,  and  they  were 
the  Suffolks,  Gordons,  and  King's  Own  Liverpools  who 
led  the  assault,  commanded  by  General  Pratt.  They 
flung  themselves  into  the  German  fines  in  the  wake  of  a 
heavy  barrage  fire,  smashing  through  broken  belts  of 
wire  and  stumbling  in  and  out  of  shell-craters.  The 
Germans,  in  their  front-lines,  had  gone  to  cover  in  deep 
dugouts  which  they  had  built  with  feverish  haste  on  the 
Bluff  and  its  neighborhood  during  the  previous  ten  days 
and  nights.  At  first  only  a  few  men,  not  more  than  a 
hundred  or  so,  could  be  discovered  alive.  The  dead  were 
thick  in  the  maze  of  trenches,  and  our  men  stumbled 
across  them. 

The  living  were  in  a  worse  state  than  the  dead,  dazed 
by  the  shell-fire,  and  cold  with  terror  when  our  men 
sprang  upon  them  in  the  darkness  before  dawn.  Small 
parties  were  collected  and  passed  back  as  prisoners — • 
marvelously  lucky  men  if  they  kept  their  sanity  as  well 
as  their  lives  after  all  that  hell  abo  utthem.  Hours  later, 
when  our  battalions  had  stormed  their  way  up  other 
trenches  into  a  salient  jutting  out  of  the  German  line 
and  beyond  the  boundary  of  the  objective  that  had  been 
given  to  them,  other  living  men  were  found  to  be  still 


264  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

hiding  in  the  depths  of  other  dugouts  and  could  not  be 
induced  to  come  out.  Terror  kept  them  in  those  holes, 
and  they  were  like  wild  beasts  at  bay,  still  dangerous 
because  they  had  their  bombs  and  rifles.  An  ultimatum 
was  shouted  down  to  them  by  men  too  busy  for  persua- 
sive talk.  "If  you  don't  come  out  you'll  be  blown  in." 
Some  of  them  came  out  and  others  were  blown  to  bits. 
After  that  the  usual  thing  happened,  the  thing  that  in- 
evitably happened  in  all  these  little  murderous  attacks 
and  counter-attacks.  The  enemy  concentrated  all  its 
power  of  artillery  on  that  position  captured  by  our  men, 
and  day  after  day  hurled  over  storms  of  shrapnel  and 
high  explosives,  under  which  our  men  cowered  until 
many  were  killed  and  more  wounded.  The  first  attack 
on  the  Bluff  and  its  recapture  cost  us  three  thousand  cas- 
ualties, and  that  was  only  the  beginning  of  a  daily  toll  of 
life  and  limbs  in  that  neighborhood  of  hell.  Through 
driving  snowstorms  shells  went  rushing  across  that  battle- 
ground, ceaselessly  in  those  first  weeks  of  March,  but  the 
3d  Division  repulsed  the  enemy's  repeated  attacks  in 
bombing  fights  which  were  very  fierce  on  both  sides. 

I  went  to  General  Pilcher's  headquarters  at  Reninghelst 
on  March  4th,  and  found  the  staff  of  the  17th  Division 
frosty  in  their  greeting,  while  General  Pratt,  the  brigadier 
of  the  3d  Division,  was  conducting  the  actack  in  their 
new  territory.  General  Pilcher  himself  was  much  shaken. 
The  old  gentleman  had  been  at  St.-Eloi  when  the  bom- 
bardment had  begun  on  his  men.  With  Captain  Rattnag 
his  A.  D.  C.  he  lay  for  an  hour  in  a  ditch  with  shells 
screaming  overhead  and  bursting  close.  More  than  once 
when  I  talked  with  him  he  raised  his  head  and  listened 
nervously  and  said:  "Do  you  hear  the  guns?  .  .  .  They 
are  terrible." 

I  was  sorry  for  him,  this  general  who  had  many  theories 
on  war  and  experimented  in  light-signals,  as  when  one 
night  I  stood  by  his  side  in  a  dark  field,  and  had  a  courteous 
old-fashioned  dignity  and  gentleness  of  manner.  He  was 
^  fine  old  English  gentleman  and  a  gallant  soldier,  but 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  265 

modern  warfare  was  too  brutal  for  him.     Too  brutal  for 
all  those  who  hated  its  slaughter. 

Those  men  of  the  3d  Division — the  "Iron  Division," 
as  it  was  called  later  in  the  war — remained  in  a  hideous 
turmoil  of  wet  earth  up  by  the  BlufF  until  other  men  came 
to  relieve  them  and  take  over  this  corner  of  hell. 

What  remained  of  the  trenches  was  deep  in  water  and 
filthy  mud,  where  the  bodies  of  many  dead  Germans  lay 
under  a  litter  of  broken  sand-bags  and  in  the  holes  of 
half-destroyed  dugouts.  Nothing  could  be  done  to  make 
it  less  horrible.  Then  the  weather  changed  and  became 
icily  cold,  with  snow  and  rain. 

One  dugout  which  had  been  taken  for  battalion  head- 
quarters was  six  feet  long  by  four  wide,  and  here  in  this 
waterlogged  hole  lived  three  officers  of  the  Royal  Scots 
to  whom  a  day  or  two  before  I  had  wished  "good  luck." 

The  servants  lived  in  the  shaft  alongside  which  was  a 
place  measuring  four  feet  by  four  feet.  There  were  no 
other  dugouts  where  men  could  get  any  shelter  from  shells 
or  storms,  and  the  enemy's  guns  were  never  silent. 

But  the  men  held  on,  as  most  of  our  men  held  on,  with 
a  resignation  to  fate  and  a  stoic  endurance  beyond  that 
ordinary  human  courage  which  we  seemed  to  know  before 
the  war. 

The  chaplain  of  this  battalion  had  spent  all  the  long 
night  behind  the  lines,  stoking  fires  and  going  round  the 
cook-houses  and  looking  at  his  wrist-watch  to  see  how 
the  minutes  were  crawling  past.  He  had  tea,  rum, 
socks,  oil,  and  food  all  ready  for  those  who  were  coming 
back,  and  the  lighted  braziers  were  glowing  red. 

At  the  appointed  time  the  padre  went  out  to  meet 
his  friends,  pressing  forward  through  the  snow  and  list- 
ening for  any  sound  of  footsteps  through  the  great 
hush. 

But  there  was  no  sound  except  the  soft  flutter  of  snow- 
flakes.  He  strained  his  eyes  for  any  moving  shadows  of 
men.     But  there  was  only  darkness  and  the  falling  snow. 


266  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Two  hours  passed,  and  they  seemed  endless  to  that  young 
chaplain  whose  brain  was  full  of  frightful  apprehensions, 
so  that  they  were  hours  of  anguish  to  him. 

Then  at  last  the  first  men  appeared.  ''I've  never  seen 
anything  so  splendid  and  so  pitiful,"  said  the  man  who 
had  been  Vv^aiting  for  them. 

They  came  along  at  about  a  mile  an  hour,  sometimes 
in  groups,  sometimes  by  twos  or  threes,  holding  on  to 
each  other,  often  one  by  one.  In  this  order  they  crept 
through  the  ruined  villages  in  the  falling  snoW,  which  lay 
thick  upon  the  masses  of  fallen  masonry.  There  was  a 
profound  silence  about  them,  and  these  snow-covered 
men  were  like  ghosts  walking  through  cities  of  death. 

No  man  spoke,  for  the  sound  of  a  human  voice  would 
have  seemed  a  danger  in  this  great  white  quietude.  They 
were  walking  like  old  men,  weak-kneed,  and  bent  under 
the  weight  of  their  packs  and  rifles. 

Yet  when  the  young  padre  greeted  them  with  a 
cheery  voice  that  hid  the  water  in  his  heart  every  one 
had  a  word  and  a  smile  in  reply,  and  made  little  jests 
about  their  drunken  footsteps,  for  they  were  like  drunken 
men  with  utter  weariness. 

"What  price  Charlie  Chaplin  now,  sir.-"'  was  one  man's 
joke. 

The  last  of  those  who  came  back — and  there  were 
many  who  never  came  back — were  some  hours  later  than 
the  first  company,  having  found  it  hard  to  crawl  along 
that  Via  Dolorosa  which  led  to  the  good  place  where  the 
braziers  were  glowing. 

It  was  a  heroic  episode,  for  each  one  of  these  men  was 
a  hero,  though  his  name  will  never  be  known  in  the  his- 
tory of  that  silent  and  hidden  war.  And  yet  it  was  an 
ordinary  episode,  no  degree  worse  in  its  hardship  than 
what  happened  all  along  the  line  when  there  was  an  attack 
or  counter-attack  in  foul  weather. 

The  marvel  of  it  was  that  our  men,  who  were  very  sim- 
ple men,  should  have  ''stuck  it  out"  with  that  grandeur 
of  courage  which  endured  all  things  without  self-interest 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  267 

and  without   emotion.     They  were   unconscious   of  the 
virtue  that  was  in  them. 


XVII 

Going  up  to  the  Hne  by  Ypres,  or  Armentieres,  or  Loos, 
I  noticed  in  those  early  months  of  1916  an  increasing 
power  of  artillery  on  our  side  of  the  lines  and  a  growing 
intensity  of  gun-fire  on  both  sides. 

Time  was,  a  year  before,  when  our  batteries  were  scat- 
tered thinly  behind  the  lines  and  when  our  gunners  had 
to  be  thrifty  of  shells,  saving  them  up  anxiously  for  hours 
of  great  need,  when  the  SOS  rocket  shot  up  a  green 
light  from  some  battered  trench  upon  which  the  enemy 
was  concentrating  ''hate." 

Those  were  ghastly  days  for  gunner  officers,  who  had 
to  answer  telephone  messages  calling  for  help  from  bat- 
talions whose  billets  were  being  shelled  to  pieces  by  long- 
range  howitzers,  or  from  engineers  whose  working-parties 
were  being  sniped  to  death  by  German  field-guns,  or  from 
a  brigadier  who  wanted  to  know,  plaintively,  whether 
the  artillery  could  not  deal  with  a  certain  gun  which  was 
enfilading  a  certain  trench  and  piling  up  the  casualties. 
It  was  hard  to  say:  *' Sorry!  .  .  .  We've  got  to  go  slow  with 
ammunition." 

That,  now,  was  ancient  history.  For  some  time  the 
fields  had  grown  a  new  crop  of  British  batteries.  Month 
after  month  our  weight  of  metal  increased,  and  while 
the  field-guns  had  been  multiplying  at  a  great  rate  the 
"heavies"  had  been  coming  out,  too,  and  giving  a  deeper 
and  more  sonorous  tone  to  that  swelling  chorus  which 
rolled  over  the  battlefields  by  day  and  night. 

There  was  a  larger  supply  of  shells  for  all  those  pieces, 
and  no  longer  the  same  need  for  thrift  when  there  was 
urgent  need  for  artillery  support.  Retaliation  was  the 
order  of  the  day,  and  if  the  enemy  asked  for  trouble  by 
any  special  show  of  "hate"  he  got  it  quickly  and  with  a 
double  dose. 


268  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Compared  with  the  infantry,  the  gunners  had  a  chance 
of  Hfe,  except  in  places  where,  as  in  the  saHent,  the  Ger- 
man observers  stared  down  at  them  from  high  ground 
and  saw  every  gun  flash  and  registered  every  battery. 
Going  round  the  sahent  one  day  with  General  Burstall — 
and  a  very  good  name,  too! — who  was  then  the  Canadian 
gunner-general,  I  was  horrified  at  the  way  in  which  the 
enemy  had  the  accurate  range  of  our  guns  and  gun-pits 
and  knocked  them  out  with  deadly  shooting. 

Here  and  there  our  amateur  gunners — quick  to  learn 
their  job — found  a  good  place,  and  were  able  to  camou- 
flage their  position  for  a  time,  and  give  praise  to  the 
little  god  of  Luck,  until  one  day  sooner  or  later  they  were 
discovered  and  a  quick  move  was  necessary  if  they  were 
not  caught  too  soon. 

So  it  was  with  a  battery  in  the  open  fields  beyond 
Kemmel  village,  where  I  went  to  see  a  boy  who  had  once 
been  a  rising  hope  of  Fleet  Street. 

He  was  new  to  his  work  and  liked  the  adventure  of  it 
— that  was  before  his  men  were  blown  to  bits  around  him 
and  he  was  sent  down  as  a  tragic  case  of  shell-shock — 
and  as  we  walked  through  the  village  of  Kemmel  he 
chatted  cheerfully  about  his  w^ork  and  life  and  found  it 
topping.  His  bright,  luminous  eyes  were  undimmed  by 
the  scene  around  him.  He  walked  in  a  jaunty,  boyish 
way  through  that  ruined  place.  It  was  not  a  pleasant 
place.  Kemmel  village,  even  in  those  days,  had  been 
blown  to  bits,  except  where,  on  the  outskirts,  the  chateau 
with  its  racing-stables  remained  untouched — "German 
spies!"  said  the  boy— and  where  a  little  grotto  to  Our 
Lady  of  Lourdes  was  also  unscathed.  The  church  was 
battered  and  broken,  and  there  were  enormous  shell-pits 
in  the  churchyard  and  open  vaults  where  old  dead  had 
been  tumbled  out  of  their  tombs.  We  walked  along  a 
sunken  road  and  then  to  a  barn  in  open  fields.  The  roof 
was  pierced  by  shrapnel  bullets,  which  let  in  the  rain  on 
wet  days  and  nights,  but  it  was  cozy  otherwise  in  the 
room  above  the;  ladder  where  the  oflicers  had  their  mess, 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  269 

There  were  some  home-made  chairs  up  there,  and  Kirch- 
ner  prints  of  naked  Httle  ladies  were  tacked  up  to  the 
beams,  among  the  trench  maps,  and  round  the  fireplace 
where  logs  were  burning  was  a  canvas  screen  to  let  down 
at  night.  A  gramophone  played  merry  music  and  gave 
a  homelike  touch  to  this  parlor  in  war. 

"A  good  spot!"  I  said.     "Is  it  well  hidden?" 

**As  safe  as  houses,"  said  the  captain  of  the  battery.' 
"Touching  wood,  I  mean." 

There  were  six  of  us  sitting  at  a  wooden  plank  on 
trestles,  and  at  those  words  five  young  men  rose  with  a 
look  of  fright  on  their  faces  and  embraced  the  beam 
supporting  the  roof  of  the  barn. 

"What's  happened?"  I  asked,  not  having  heard  the 
howl  of  a  shell. 

"Nothing,"  said  the  boy,  "except  touching  wood. 
The  captain  spoke  too  loudly." 

We  went  out  to  the  guns  which  were  to  do  a  little  shoot- 
ing, and  found  them  camouflaged  from  aerial  eyes  in  the 
grim  desolation  of  the  battlefield,  all  white  after  a  morn- 
ing's snowstorm,  except  where  the  broken  walls  of  dis- 
tant farmhouses  and  the  windmills  on  Kemmel  Hill 
showed  black  as  ink. 

The  gunners  could  not  see  their  target,  which  had  been 
given  to  them  through  the  telephone,  but  they  knew  it 
by  the  figures  giving  the  angle  of  fire. 

"It's  a  pumping-party  in  a  waterlogged  trench,"  said 
a  bright-eyed  boy  by  my  side  (he  was  one  of  the  rising 
hopes  of  Fleet  Street  before  he  became  a  gunner  officer 
in  Flanders).  "With  any  luck  we  shall  get  'em  in  the  neck, 
and  I  like  to  hear  the  Germans  squeal.  .  .  .  And  my  gun's 
ready  first,  as  usual." 

The  officer  commanding  shouted  through  a  tin  mega- 
phone, and  the  battery  fired,  each  gun  following  its  brother 
at  a  second  interval,  with  the  staccato  shock  of  a  field-piece, 
which  is  more  painful  than  the  dull  roar  of  a  "heavy." 

A  word  came  along  the  wire  from  the  officer  in  the 
observation  post  a  mile  away. 


270  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Another  order  was  called  through  the  tin  mouthpiece. 

"Repeat!" 

"We've  got  'em,"  said  the  young  gentleman  by  my  side, 
in  a  cheerful  way. 

The  officer  with  the  megaphone  looked  across  and 
smiled. 

"We  may  as  well  give  them  a  salvo.  They  won't  like 
it  a  bit." 

A  second  or  two  later  there  was  a  tremendous  crash  as 
the  four  guns  fired  together.  "Repeat!"  came  the  high 
voice  through  the  megaphone. 

The  still  air  was  rent  again.  ...  In  a  waterlogged 
trench,  which  we  could  not  see,  a  German  pumping-party 
had  been  blown  to  bits. 

The  artillery  officers  took  turns  in  the  observation 
posts,  sleeping  for  the  night  in  one  of  the  dugouts  behind 
the  front  trench  instead  of  in  the  billet  below. 

The  way  to  the  observation  post  was  sometimes  a  little 
vague,  especially  in  frost-and-thaw  weather,  when  parts 
of  the  communication  trenches  slithered  down  under  the 
weight  of  sand-bags. 

The  young  officer  who  walked  with  luminous  eyes  and 
eager  step  found  it  necessary  to  crawl  on  his  stomach 
before  he  reached  his  lookout  station  from  which  he 
looked  straight  across  the  enemy's  trenches.  But,  once 
there,  it  was  pretty  comfortable  and  safe,  barring  a  direct 
hit  from  above  or  a  little  mining  operation  underneath. 

He  made  a  seat  of  a  well-filled  sand-bag  (it  was  rather 
a  shock  when  he  turned  it  over  one  day  to  get  dry  side 
up  and  found  a  dead  Frenchman  there),  and  smoked  Bel- 
gian cigars  for  the  sake  of  their  aroma,  and  sat  there  very 
solitary  and  watchful. 

The  rats  worried  him  a  little— they  were  bold  enough 
to  bare  their  teeth  when  they  met  him  down  a  trench, 
and  there  was  one  big  fellow  called  Cuthbert,  who  romped 
round  his  dugout  and  actually  bit  his  ear  one  night.  But 
these  inconveniences  did  not  seem  to  give  any  real  distress 
to  the  soul  of  youth,  out  there  alone  and  searching  for 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  271 

human  targets  to  kill  .  .  .  until  one  day,  as  I  have  said, 
everything  snapped  in  him  and  the  boy  was  broken. 

It  was  on  the  way  back  from  Kemmel  village  one  day 
that  I  met  a  queer  apparition  through  a  heavy  snow- 
storm. It  was  a  French  civilian  in  evening  dress — boiled 
shirt,  white  tie,  and  all — with  a  bowler  hat  bent  to  the 
storm. 

Tomlinson,  the  great  Tomlinson,  was  with  me,  and 
shook  his  head. 

"It  isn't  true,"  he  said.  "I  don't  believe  it.  .  .  .  We're 
mad,  that's  all!  .  .  .  The  whole  world  is  mad,  so  why 
should  we  be  sane?" 

We  stared  after  the  man  who  went  into  the  ruin  of 
Kemmel,  to  the  noise  of  gun-fire,  in  evening  dress,  with- 
out an  overcoat,  through  a  blizzard  of  snow. 

A  little  farther  down  the  road  we  passed  a  signboard 
on  the  edge  of  a  cratered  field.  New  words  had  been 
painted  on  it  in  good  Roman  letters. 

Cimetiere  reserve 

Tomlinson,  the  only  Tomlinson,  regarded  it  gravely 
and  turned  to  me  with  a  world  of  meaning  in  his  eyes. 
Then  he  tapped  his  forehead  and  laughed. 

*'Mad!"  he  said.     "We're  all  mad!" 


XVIII 

In  that  winter  of  discontent  there  was  one  great  body 
of  splendid  men  whose  spirits  had  sunk  to  zero,  seeing 
no  hope  ahead  of  them  in  that  warfare  of  trenches  and 
barbed  wire.  The  cavalry  believed  they  were  "bunk- 
ered" forever,  and  that  all  their  training  and  tradition 
were  made  futile  by  the  digging  in  of  armies.  Now  and 
again,  when  the  infantry  was  hard  pressed,  as  in  the 
second  battle  of  Ypres  and  the  battle  of  Loos,  they  were 
called  on  to  leave  their  horses  behind  and  take  a  turn  in 
the  trenches,  and  then  they  came  back  again,  less  some 


-72  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

of  their  comrades,  into  dirty  billets  remote  from  the 
fighting-lines,  to  exercise  their  horses  and  curse  the  war. 

Before  they  went  into  the  line  in  February  of  'i6  I 
went  to  see  some  of  those  cavalry  officers  to  wish  them 
good  luck,  and  saw  them  in  the  trenches  and  afterward 
when  they  came  out.  In  the  headquarters  of  a  squadron 
of  "Royals" — the  way  in  was  by  a  ladder  through  the 
window — billeted  in  a  village,  which  on  a  day  of  frost 
looked  as  quaint  and  pretty  as  a  Christmas  card,  was  a 
party  of  officers  typical  of  the  British  cavalry  as  a  whole. 

A  few  pictures  cut  out  of  La  Vie  Parisienne  were  tacked 
on  to  the  walls  to  remind  them  of  the  arts  and  graces  of 
an  older  mode  of  life,  and  to  keep  them  human  by  the 
sight  of  a  pretty  face  (oh,  to  see  a  pretty  girl  again!). 

Now  they  were  going  to  change  this  cottage  for  the 
trenches,  this  quiet  village  with  a  church-bell  chiming 
every  hour,  for  the  tumult  in  the  battle-front — this  abso- 
lute safety  for  the  immediate  menace  of  death.  They 
knew  already  the  beastliness  of  Hfe  in  trenches.  They 
had  no  illusions  about  "glory."  But  they  were  glad  to 
go,  because  activity  was  better  than  inactivity,  and  be- 
cause the  risk  would  give  them  back  their  pride,  and 
because  the  cavalry  should  fight  anyhow  and  somehow, 
even  if  a  charge  or  a  pursuit  were  denied  them. 

They  had  a  hot  time  in  the  trenches.  The  enemy's 
artillery  was  active,  and  the  list  of  casualties  began  to 
tot  up.  A  good  officer  and  a  fine  fellow  was  killed  almost 
at  the  outset,  and  men  were  horribly  wounded.  But  all 
those  troopers  showed  a  cool  courage. 

Things  looked  bad  for  a  few  minutes  when  a  section  of 
trenches  was  blown  in,  isolating  one  platoon  from  another. 
A  sergeant-major  made  his  way  back  from  the  damaged 
section,  and  a  young  officer  who  was  going  forward  to 
find  out  the  extent  of  damage  met  him  on  the  way. 

"Can  I  get  through?"  asked  the  officer. 

**rve  got  through,"  was  the  answer,  "but  it's  chancing 
one's  luck." 

The  officer  "chanced  his  lurk,"  but  did  not  expect  to 


A  WINTER  OF   DISCONTENT  273 

come  back  alive.  Afterward  he  tried  to  analyze  his  feel- 
ings for  my  benefit. 

'*I  had  no  sense  of  fear,"  he  said,  "but  a  sort  of  sub- 
conscious knowledge  that  the  odds  were  against  me  if  I 
went  on,  and  yet  a  conscious  determination  to  go  on  at 
all  costs  and  find  out  what  had  happened," 

He  came  back,  covered  with  blood,  but  unwounded.  In 
spite  of  all  the  unpleasant  sights  in  a  crumpled  trench,  he 
had  the  heart  to  smile  w^hen  in  the  middle  of  the  night 
one  of  the  sergeants  approached  him  with  an  amiable 
suggestion. 

"Don't  you  think  it  would  be  a  good  time,  sir,  to  make 
a  slight  attack  upon  the  enemy  .f*" 

There  was  something  in  those  words,  "a  slight  attack," 
which  is  irresistibly  comic  to  any  of  us  who  know  the  con- 
ditions of  modern  trench  war.  But  they  were  not  spoken 
in  jest. 

So  the  cavalry  did  its  "bit"  again,  though  not  as 
cavalry,  and  I  saw  some  of  them  when  they  came  back, 
and  they  were  glad  to  have  gone  through  that  bloody 
business  so  that  no  man  might  fling  a  scornful  word  as 
they  passed  with  their  horses. 

"It  is  queer,"  said  my  friend,  "how  we  go  from  this 
place  of  peace  to  the  battlefield,  and  then  come  back  for 
a  spell  before  going  up  again.  It  is  like  passing  from  one 
life  to  another." 

In  that  cavalry  mess  I  heard  queer  conversations. 
Those  officers  belonged  to  the  old  families  of  England, 
the  old  caste  of  aristocracy,  but  the  foul  outrage  of  the 
war — the  outrage  against  all  ideals  of  civilization — had 
made  them  think,  some  of  them  for  the  first  time,  about 
the  structure  of  social  life  and  of  the  human  family. 

They  hated  Germany  as  the  direct  cause  of  war,  but 
they  looked  deeper  than  that  and  saw  how  the  leaders  of 
all  great  nations  in  Europe  had  maintained  the  philosophy 
of  forms  and  had  built  up  hatreds  and  fears  and  alliances 
over  the  heads  of  the  peoples  whom  they  inflamed  with 
passion  or  duped  with  hes. 


274  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"The  politicians  are  the  guilty  ones,"  said  one  cavalry 
officer.  *'I  am  all  for  revolution  after  this  bloody  mas- 
sacre. I  would  hang  all  politicians,  diplomats,  and  so- 
called  statesmen  with  strict  impartiality." 

"I'm  for  the  people,"  said  another.  "The  poor,  bloody 
people,  who  are  kept  in  ignorance  and  then  driven  into 
the  shambles  when  their  rulers  desire  to  grab  some  new 
part  of  the  earth's  surface  or  to  get  their  armies  going 
because  they  are  bored  with  peace." 

"What  price  Christianity .f"'  asked  another,  inevitably. 
"What  have  the  churches  done  to  stop  war  or  preach  the 
gospel  of  Christ  ?  The  Bishop  of  London,  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  all  those  conventional,  patriotic,  cannon- 
blessing,  banner-baptizing  humbugs.  God!  They  make 
me  tired!" 

Strange  words  to  hear  in  a  cavalry  mess!  Strange 
turmoil  in  the  souls  of  men!  They  were  the  same  words 
I  had  heard  from  London  boys  in  Ypres,  spoken  just  as 
crudely.  But  many  young  gentlemen  who  spoke  those 
words  have  already  forgotten  them  or  would  deny  them. 


XIX 

The  winter  of  191 5-16  passed  with  its  misery,  and 
spring  came  again  to  France  and  Flanders  with  its  prom- 
ise of  life,  fulfilled  in  the  beauty  of  wild  flowers  and  the 
green  of  leaves  where  the  earth  was  not  made  barren  by 
the  fire  of  war  and  all  trees  killed. 

For  men  there  was  no  promise  of  life,  but  only  new 
preparations  for  death,  and  continued  killing. 

The  battle  of  Verdun  was  still  going  on,  and  France 
had  saved  herself  from  a  mortal  blow  at  the  heart  by  a 
desperate,  heroic  resistance  which  cost  her  five  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  in  dead  and  wounded.  On  the  British 
front  there  were  still  no  great  battles,  but  those  trench 
raids,  artillery  duels,  mine  fighting,  and  small  massacres 
which  filled  the  casualty  clearing  stations  with  the  aver- 
age amount  of  human  wreckage.     The  British  armies  were 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  275 

being  held  in  leash  for  a  great  offensive  in  the  summer. 
New  divisions  were  learning  the  lessons  of  the  old  divisions, 
and  here  and  there  generals  were  doing  a  little  fancy  work 
to  keep  things  merry  and  bright. 

So  it  was  when  some  mines  were  exploded  under  the 
German  earthworks  on  the  lower  slopes  of  the  Vimy 
Ridge,  where  the  enemy  had  already  blown  several  mines 
and  taken  possession  of  their  craters.  It  was  to  gain 
those  craters,  and  new  ones  to  be  made  by  our  mine 
charges,  that  the  74th  Brigade  of  the  25th  Division,  a 
body  of  Lancashire  men,  the  9th  Loyal  North  Lanca- 
shires  and  the  nth  Royal  Fusiliers,  w^ith  a  company  of 
Royal  Engineers  and  some  Welsh  pioneers,  were  detailed 
for  the  perilous  adventure  of  driving  in  the  mine  shafts, 
putting  tremendous  charges  of  high  explosives  in  the  sap- 
heads,  and  rushing  the  German  positions. 

It  was  on  the  evening  of  May  15th,  after  two  days  of 
•\^et  and  cloudy  weather  preventing  the  enemy's  observa- 
tion, that  our  heavy  artillery  fired  a  short  number  of 
rounds  to  send  the  Germans  into  their  dugouts.  A  few 
minutes  later  the  right  group  of  mines  exploded  with  a 
terrific  roar  and  blew  in  two  of  the  five  old  German 
craters.  After  the  long  rumble  of  heaving  earth  had 
been  stilled  there  was  just  time  enough  to  hear  the  stac- 
cato of  a  German  machine-gun.  Then  there  was  a  second 
roar  and  a  wild  upheaval  of  soil  when  the  left  group  of 
mines  destroyed  two  more  of  the  German  craters  and 
knocked  out  the  machine-gun. 

The  moment  for  the  infantry  attack  had  come,  and  the 
men  were  ready.  The  first  to  get  away  were  two  lieu- 
tenants of  the  9th  Loyal  North  Lancashires,  who  rushed 
forward  with  their  assaulting-parties  to  the  remaining 
crater  on  the  extreme  left,  which  had  not  been  blown  up. 

W^ith  little  opposition  from  dazed  and  terror-strict  en 
Germans,  bayoneted  as  they  scrambled  out  of  the  chaotic 
earth,  our  men  flung  themselves  into  those  smoking  pits 
and  were  followed  immediately  by  working-parties,  who 
built  up  bombing  posts  with  earth  and  sand-bags  on  the 


276  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

crater  lip  and  began  to  dig  out  communication  trenches 
leading  to  them.  The  assaulting-parties  of  the  Lanca- 
shire Fusihers  were  away  at  the  first  signal,  and  were 
attacking  the  other  groups  of  craters  under  heavy  fire. 

The  Germans  were  shaken  with  terror  because  the 
explosion  of  the  mines  had  killed  and  wounded  a  large 
number  of  them,  and  through  the  darkness  there  rang  out 
the  cheers  of  masses  of  men  who  were  out  for  blood. 
Through  the  darkness  there  now  glowed  a  scarlet  light, 
flooding  all  that  turmoil  of  earth  and  men  with  a  vivid, 
red  illumination,  as  flare  after  flare  rose  high  into  the  sky 
from  several  points  of  the  German  line.  Later  the  red 
lights  died  down,  and  then  other  rockets  were  fired,  giving 
a  green  light  to  this  scene  of  war. 

The  German  gunners  were  now  at  work  in  answer  to 
those  beacons  of  distress,  and  with  every  caliber  of  gun 
from  howitzers  to  minenzverfers  they  shelled  our  front-lines 
for  two  hours  and  killed  for  vengeance.  They  were  too 
late  to  stop  the  advance  of  the  assaulting  troops,  who 
were  fighting  in  the  craters  against  groups  of  German 
bombers  who  tried  to  force  their  way  up  to  the  rescue 
(if  a  position  already  lost.  One  of  our  ofticers  leading 
the  assault  on  one  of  the  craters  on  the  right  was  killed 
very  quickly,  but  his  men  were  not  checked,  and  with 
individual  resolution  and  initiative,  and  the  grit  of  the 
Lancashire  man  in  a  tight  place,  fought  on  grimly,  and 
won  their  purpose. 

A  young  lieutenant  fell  dead  from  a  bullet  wound  after 
he  had  directed  his  men  to  their  posts  from  the  lip  of  a 
new  mine-crater,  as  coolly  as  though  he  were  a  master  of 
ceremonies  in  a  Lancashire  ballroom.  Another,  a  cham- 
pion bomb-thrower,  with  a  range  of  forty  yards,  flung 
his  hand-grenades  at  the  enemy  with  untiring  skill  and 
with  a  fierce  contempt  of  death,  until  he  was  killed  by  an 
answering  shot.  The  N.  C.  O.'s  took  up  the  command 
and  the  men  "carried  on"  until  they  held  all  the  chain  of 
craters,  crouching  and  panting  above  mangled  men. 

They  were  hours  of  anguish  for  many  Germans,  who 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  277 

lay  wounded  and  half  buried,  or  quite  buried,  in  the  chaos 
of  earth  made  by  those  mine-craters  now  doubly  up- 
heaved. Their  screams  and  moans  sounding  above  the 
guns,  the  frantic  cries  of  men  maddened  under  tons  of 
earth,  which  kept  them  prisoners  in  deep  pits  below  the 
crater  lips,  and  awful  inarticulate  noises  of  human  pain 
coming  out  of  that  lower  darkness  beyond  the  light  of  the 
rockets,  made  up  a  chorus  of  agony  more  than  our  men 
could  endure,  even  in  the  heat  of  battle.  They  shouted 
across  to  the  German  grenadiers: 

"We  will  cease  fire  if  you  will,  and  let  you  get  in  your 
wounded. . . .  Cease  fire  for  the  wounded!" 

The  shout  was  repeated,  and  our  bombers  held  their 
hands,  still  waiting  for  an  answer.  But  the  answer  was  a 
new  storm  of  bombs,  and  the  fighting  went  on,  and  the 
moaning  of  the  men  who  were  helpless  and  unhelped. 

W'^orking-parties  followed  up  the  assault  to  ''consoli- 
date" the  position.  They  did  amazing  things,  toiling  in 
the  darkness  under  abominable  shell-fire,  and  by  daylight 
had  built  communication  trenches  with  head-cover  from 
the  crater  lips  to  our  front-line  trenches. 

But  now  it  was  the  enemy's  turn — the  turn  of  his  guns, 
which  poured  explosive  fire  into  those  pits,  churning  up 
the  earth  again,  mixing  it  with  new  flesh  and  blood,  and 
carving  up  his  own  dead;  and  it  was  the  turn  of  his 
bombers,  who  followed  this  fire  in  strong  assaults  upon 
the  Lancashire  lads,  who,  lying  among  their  killed  and 
wounded,  had  to  repel  those  fierce  attacks. 

On  May  17th  I  went  to  see  General  Doran  of  the  25th 
Division,  an  optimistic  old  gentleman  who  took  a  bright 
view  of  things,  and  Colonel  Crosby,  who  was  acting- 
brigadier  of  the  74th  Brigade,  which  had  made  the  attack. 
He,  too,  was  enthusiastic  about  the  situation,  though  his 
brigade  had  suff'ered  eight  hundred  casualties  in  a  month 
of  routine  warfare. 

In  my  simple  way  I  asked  him  a  direct  question: 

"Do  you  think  your  men  can  hold  on  to  the  craters, 


278  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Colonel  Crosby  stared  at  me  sternly. 

"Certainly.  The  position  cannot  be  retaken 'over-^ 
ground.     We  hold  it  strongly." 

As  he  spoke  an  orderly  came  into  his  billet  (a  small 
farmhouse),  saluted,  and  handed  him  a  pink  slip,  which 
was  a  telephone  message.  I  watched  him  read  it,  and 
saw  the  sudden  pallor  of  his  face,  and  noticed  how  the 
room  shook  with  the  constant  reverberation  of  distant 
gun-fire.  A  big  bombardment  was  in  progress  over  Vimy 
way. 

"Excuse  me,"  said  the  colonel;  "things  seem  to  be  hap- 
pening.    I  must  go  at  once." 

He  went  through  the  window,  leaping  the  sill,  and  a 
look  of  bad  tidings  went  with  him. 

His  men  had  been  blown  out  of  the  craters. 

A  stafF-officer  sat  in  the  brigade  office,  and  when  the 
acting-brigadier  had  gone  raised  his  head  and  looked 
across  to  me. 

"I  am  a  critic  of  these  affairs,"  he  said.  "They  seem 
to  me  too  expensive.     But  I'm  here  to  do  what  I  am  told." 

We  did  not  regain  the  Vimy  craters  until  a  year  after- 
ward, when  the  Canadians  and  Scottish  captured  all  the 
Vimy  Ridge  in  a  great  assault. 

XX 

The  winter  of  discontent  had  passed.  Summer  had 
come  with  a  wealth  of  beauty  in  the  fields  of  France  this 
side  the  belt  of  blasted  earth.  The  grass  was  a  tapestry 
of  flowers,  and  tits  and  warblers  and  the  golden  oriole 
were  making  music  in  the  woods.  At  dusk  the  nightin- 
gale sang  as  though  no  war  were  near  its  love,  and  at 
broad  noonday  a  million  larks  rose  above  the  tall  wheat 
with  a  great  high  chorus  of  glad  notes. 

Among  the  British  armies  there  was  hope  again,  im- 
mense faith  that  believed  once  more  in  an  ending  to  the 
war.  Verdun  had  been  saved.  The  enemy  had  been 
slaughtered.     His  reserves  were  thin  and  hard  to  get  (so 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  279 

said  Intelligence)  and  the  British,  stronger  than  they  had 
ever  been,  in  men,  and  guns,  and  shells,  and  aircraft,  and 
all  material  of  war,  were  going  to  be  launched  in  a  great 
offensive.  No  more  trench  warfare.  No  more  dying  in 
ditches.  Out  into  the  open,  with  an  Army  of  Pursuit 
(Rawlinson's)  and  a  quick  break-through.  It  was  to  be 
"The  Great  Push."  The  last  battles  were  to  be  fought 
before  the  year  died  again,  though  many  men  would  die 
before  that  time. 

Up  in  the  salient  something  happened  to  make  men 
question  the  weakness  of  the  enemy,  but  the  news  did 
not  spread  very  far  and  there  was  a  lot  to  do  elsewhere, 
on  the  Somme,  where  the  salient  seemed  a  long  way  off. 
It  was  the  Canadians  to  whom  it  happened,  and  it  was 
an  ugly  thing. 

On  June  2d  a  flame  of  fire  from  many  batteries  opened 
upon  their  lines  in  Sanctuary  Wood  and  Maple  Copse, 
beyond  the  Hues  of  Ypres,  and  tragedy  befell  them.  I 
went  to  see  those  who  lived  through  it  and  stood  in  the 
presence  of  men  who  had  escaped  from  the  very  pits  of 
that  hell  which  had  been  invented  by  human  beings  out 
of  the  earth's  chemistry,  and  yet  had  kept  their  reason. 

The  enemy's  bombardment  began  suddenly,  with  one 
great  crash  of  guns,  at  half  past  eight  on  Friday  morning. 
Generals  Mercer  and  Williams  had  gone  up  to  inspect 
the  trenches  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

It  had  been  almost  silent  along  the  lines  when  the 
enemy's  batteries  opened  fire  with  one  enormous  thunder- 
stroke, which  was  followed  by  continuous  salvos.  The 
shells  came  from  nearly  every  point  of  the  compass — 
north,  east,  and  south.  The  evil  spell  of  the  saHent  was 
over  our  men  again. 

In  the  trenches  just  south  of  Hooge  were  the  Princess 
Patricia's  Light  Infantry,  with  some  battalions  of  the 
Royal  Canadian  Regiment  south  of  them,  and  some  of 
the  Canadian  Mounted  Rifles  (who  had  long  been  dis- 
mounted), and  units  from  another  Canadian  division  at 


28o  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  extreme  end  of  their  Hne  of  front.  It  was  those  men 
who  had  to  suffer  the  tempest  of  the  enemy's  shells. 

Earth  below  them  opened  up  into  great  craters  as  high- 
explosive  shells  burst  continually,  flinging  up  masses  of 
soil,  flattening  out  breastworks  and  scattering  sand-bags 
into  dust. 

Canadians  in  the  front  trenches  held  on  in  the  midst 
of  this  uproar.  "They  took  it  all,"  said  one  of  the 
officers,  and  in  that  phrase,  spoken  simply  by  a  man 
who  was  there,  too,  lies  the  spirit  of  pride  and  sacrifice. 
"They  took  it  all"  and  did  not  budge,  though  the  sky 
seemed  to  be  opening  above  them  and  the  earth  below 
them. 

The  bombardment  continued  without  a  pause  for  five 
hours,  by  which  time  most  of  our  front  trenches  had  been 
annihilated.  At  about  a  quarter  past  one  the  enemy's 
guns  lifted  a  little,  and  through  the  dense  smoke-clouds 
which  made  a  solid  bar  across  No  Man's  Land  appeared 
a  mass  of  German  infantry.  They  wore  their  packs  and 
full  field-kit,  as  though  they  had  come  to  stay. 

Perhaps  they  expected  that  no  one  lived  in  the  British 
trenches,  and  it  was  a  reasonable  idea,  but  wrong.  There 
were  brave  men  remaining  there,  alive  and  determined 
to  fight.  Although  the  order  for  retirement  had  been 
given,  single  figures  here  and  there  were  seen  to  get  over 
the  broken  parapets  and  go  forward  to  meet  the  enemy 
halfway.  They  died  to  a  man,  fighting.  It  seemed  to 
me  one  of  the  most  pitiful  and  heroic  things  of  this  war, 
that  little  crowd  of  men,  many  of  them  wounded,  some  of 
them  dazed  and  deaf,  stumbling  forward  to  their  certain 
death  to  oppose  the  enemy's  advance. 

From  the  network  of  trenches  behind,  not  altogether 
smashed,  there  was  time  for  men  to  retire  to  a  second  line 
of  defense,  if  they  were  still  unwounded  and  had  strength 
to  go.  An  officer — Captain  Crossman— in  command  of 
one  of  these  support  companies,  brought  several  men  out 
of  a  trench,  but  did  not  follow  on.  He  turned  again, 
facing  the  enemy,  and  was  last  seen — "a  big,  husky  man," 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  281 

says  one  of  his  comrades — as  he  fired  his  revolver  and  then 
flung  it  into  a  German's  face. 

Colonel  Shaw  of  the  1st  Battalion,  C.  M.  R.,  ralHed 
eighty  men  out  of  the  Cumberland  dugouts,  and  died 
fighting.  The  Germans  were  kept  at  bay  for  some  time, 
but  they  flung  their  bombs  into  the  square  of  men,  so  that 
very  few  remained  alive.  When  only  eight  were  still 
fighting  among  the  bodies  of  their  comrades  these  tat- 
tered and  blood-splashed  men,  standing  there  fiercely 
contemptuous  of  the  enemy  and  death,  were  ordered  to 
retire  by  Major  Palmer,  the  last  officer  among  them. 

Meanwhile  the  battalions  in  support  were  holding  firm 
in  spite  of  the  shell-fire,  which  raged  above  them  also, 
and  it  was  against  this  second  line  of  Canadians  that  the 
German  infantry  came  up — and  broke. 

In  the  center  the  German  thrust  was  hard  toward 
Zillebeke  Lake.  Here  some  of  the  Canadian  Rifles 
were  in  support,  and  as  soon  as  the  infantry  attack 
began  they  were  ordered  forward  to  meet  and  check  the 
enemy.  An  officer  in  command  of  one  of  their  battalions 
afterward  told  me  that  he  led  his  men  across  country  to 
Maple  Copse  under  such  a  fire  as  he  had  never  seen. 
Because  of  the  comrades  in  front,  in  dire  need  of  help,  no 
notice  was  taken  as  the  wounded  fell,  but  the  others 
pressed  on  as  fast  as  they  could  go. 

Maple  Copse  was  reached,  and  here  the  men  halted 
and  awaited  the  enemy  with  another  battalion  who  were 
already  holding  this  wood  of  six  or  seven  acres.  When 
the  German  troops  arrived  they  may  have  expected  to 
meet  no  great  resistance.  They  met  a  withering  fire, 
which  caused  them  bloody  losses.  The  Canadians  had 
assembled  at  various  points,  which  became  strongholds 
of  defense  with  machine-guns  and  bomb  stores,  and  the 
men  held  their  fire  until  the  enemy  was  within  close 
range,  so  that  they  worked  havoc  among  them.  But  the 
German  guns  never  ceased  and  many  Canadians  fell. 
Col.  E.  H.  Baker,  a  member  of  the  Canadian  Parliament, 
fell  with  a  piece  of  shell  in  his  lung. 


282  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Hour  after  hour  our  gunners  fed  their  breeches  and 
poured  out  shells.  The  edge  of  the  sahent  was  swept 
with  fire,  and,  though  the  Canadian  losses  were  frightful, 
the  Germans  suffered  also,  so  that  the  battlefield  was  one 
great  shambles.  Our  own  wounded,  who  were  brought 
back,  owe  their  lives  to  the  stretcher-bearers,  who  were 
supreme  in  devotion.  They  worked  in  and  out  across 
that  shell-swept  ground  hour  after  hour  through  the  day 
and  night,  rescuing  many  stricken  men  at  a  great  cost 
in  life  to  themselves.  Out  of  one  party  of  twenty  only 
five  remained  alive.  "No  one  can  say,"  said  one  of  their 
officers,  "that  the  Canadians  do  not  know  how  to  die." 

No  one  would  deny  that. 

Out  of  three  thousand  men  in  the  Canadian  8th  Brigade 
their  casualties  were  twenty-two  hundred. 

There  were  151  survivors  from  the  1st  Battalion  Cana- 
dian Mounted  Rifles,  130  from  the  4th  Battalion,  350 
from  the  5th,  520  from  the  2d.  Those  are  the  figures  of 
massacre. 

Eleven  days  later  the  Canadians  took  their  revenge. 
Their  own  guns  were  but  a  small  part  of  the  huge  orchestra 
of  "heavies"  and  field  batteries  which  played  the  devil's 
tattoo  upon  the  German  positions  in  our  old  trenches.  It 
was  annihilating,  and  the  German  soldiers  had  to  endure 
the  same  experience  as  their  guns  had  given  to  Canadian 
troops  on  the  same  ground.  Trenches  already  battered 
were  smashed  again.  The  earth,  which  was  plowed  with 
shells  in  their  own  attack,  was  flung  up  again  by  our 
shells.     It  was  hell  again  for  poor  human  wretches. 

The  Canadian  troops  charged  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  Their  attack  was  directed  to  the  part  of  the 
line  from  the  southern  end  of  Sanctuary  Wood  to  Mount 
Gorst,  about  a  mile,  which  included  Armagh  Wood,  Ob- 
servatory Hill,  and  Mount  Gorst  itself. 

The  attack  went  quickly  and  the  men  expected  greater 
trouble.  The  enemy's  shell-fire  was  heavy,  but  the  Cana- 
dians got  through  under  cover  of  their  own  guns,  which 
had  Icngtliened  their  fuses  a  little  and  continued  an  in- 


A  WINTER  OF  DISCONTENT  283 

tense  bombardment  behind  the  enemy's  first  Hne.  The 
men  advanced  in  open  order  and  worked  downward  and 
southward  into  their  old  positions. 

In  one  pLice  of  attack  about  forty  Germans,  who  fought 
desperately,  were  killed  almost  to  a  man,  just  as  Colonel 
Shaw  had  died  on  June  2d  with  his  party  of  eighty  men 
who  had  rallied  round  him.  It  was  one  shambles  for 
another,  and  the  Germans  were  not  less  brave,  it  seems. 

One  officer  and  one  hundred  and  thirteen  men  surren- 
dered. The  officer  was  glad  to  escape  from  the  death  to 
which  he  had  resigned  himself  when  our  bombardment 
began. 

"I  knew  how  it  would  be,"  he  said.  **We  had  orders 
to  take  this  ground,  and  took  it;  but  we  knew  you  would 
come  back  again.     You  had  to  do  so.     So  here  I  am." 

Parts  of  the  line  were  deserted,  except  by  the  dead. 
In  one  place  the  stores  which  had  been  buried  by  the 
Canadians  before  they  left  were  still  there,  untouched  by 
the  enemy.  Our  bombardment  had  made  it  impossible 
for  his  troops  to  consolidate  their  position  and  to  hold 
the  line  steady. 

They  had  just  taken  cover  in  the  old  bits  of  trench, 
in  shell-holes  and  craters,  and  behind  scattered  sand-bags, 
and  had  been  pounded  there.  The  Canadians  were  back 
again. 


Part  Five 

THE  HEART 
OF   A   CITY 


AMIENS  IN  TIME  OF  WAR 


DURING  the  battles  of  the  Somme  in  1916,  and 
afterward  in  periods  of  progress  and  retreat  over  the 
abominable  fields,  the  city  of  Amiens  was  the  capital  of 
the  British  army.  When  the  battles  began  in  July  of 
that  year  it  was  only  a  short  distance  away  from  the 
fighting-Hnes;  near  enough  to  hear  the  incessant  roar  of 
gun-fire  on  the  French  front  and  ours,  and  near  enough  to 
get,  by  motor-car  or  lorry,  in  less  than  thirty  minutes, 
to  places  where  men  were  being  killed  or  maimed  or 
blinded  in  the  routine  of  the  day's  work.  One  went  out 
past  Amiens  station  and  across  a  little  stone  bridge  which 
afterward,  in  the  enemy's  advance  of  1918,  became  the 
mark  for  German  high  velocities  along  the  road  to  Quer- 
rieux,  where  RawHnson  had  his  headquarters  of  the 
Fourth  Army  in  an  old  chateau  with  pleasant  meadows 
round  it  and  a  stream  meandering  through  fields  of  but- 
tercups in  summer-time.  Beyond  the  dusty  village  of 
Querrieux  with  its  white  cottages,  from  which  the  plaster 
fell  off  in  blotches  as  the  war  went  on,  we  went  along  the 
straight  highroad  to  Albert,  through  the  long  and  strag- 
gling village  of  Lahoussoye,  where  Scottish  soldiers  in 
reserve  lounged  about  among  frowsy  peasant  women  and 
played  solemn  games  with  "the  bairns";  and  so,  past 
camps  and  hutments  on  each  side  of  the  road,  to  the  ugly 
red-brick  town  where  the  Golden  Virgin  hung  head  down- 
ward from  the  broken  tower  of  the  church  with  her  Babe 
outstretched  above  the  fields  of  death  as  though  as  a 
peace-ofFering  to  this  world  at  war. 

One  could  be  killed  any  day  in  Albert.     I  saw  men 


288  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

blown  to  bits  there  the  day  after  the  battles  of  the  Somme 
began.  It  was  in  the  road  that  turned  to  the  right,  past 
the  square  to  go  to  Meaulte  and  on  to  Fricourt.  There 
was  a  tide  of  gun  transport  swirling  down  the  road,  bring- 
ing up  new  ammunition  for  the  guns  that  were  firing 
without  a  pause  over  Fricourt  and  Mametz.  The  high 
scream  of  a  shell  came  through  a  blue  sky  and  ended  on 
its  downward  note  with  a  sharp  crash.  For  a  few  min- 
utes the  transport  column  was  held  up  while  a  mass  of 
raw  flesh  which  a  second  before  had  been  two  living  men 
and  their  horses  was  cleared  out  of  the  way.  Then  the 
gun  wagons  went  at  a  harder  pace  down  the  road,  raising 
a  cloud  of  white  dust  out  of  which  I  heard  the  curses  of 
the  drivers,  swearing  in  a  foul  way  to  disguise  their  fear. 

I  went  through  Albert  many  scores  of  times  to  the 
battlefields  beyond,  and  watched  its  process  of  disinte- 
gration through  those  years,  until  it  was  nothing  but  a 
wild  scrap  heap  of  red  brick  and  twisted  iron,  and,  in  the 
last  phase,  even  the  Golden  Virgin  and  her  Babe,  which 
had  seemed  to  escape  all  shell-fire  by  miraculous  powers, 
lay  buried  beneath  a  mass  of  masonry.  Beyond  were  the 
battlefields  of  the  Somme  where  every  yard  of  ground 
is  part  of  the  great  graveyard  of  our  youth. 

So  Amiens,  as  I  have  said,  was  not  far  away  from  the 
red  heart  of  war,  and  was  near  enough  to  the  lines  to  be 
crowded  always  with  officers  and  men  who  came  out  be- 
tween one  battle  and  another,  and  by  "lorry-jumping" 
could  reach  this  city  for  a  few  hours  of  civilized  life,  ac- 
cording to  their  views  of  civilization.  To  these  men — 
boys,  mostly — who  had  been  living  in  lousy  ditches  under 
hell  fire,  Amiens  was  Paradise,  with  little  hells  for  those 
who  liked  them.  There  were  hotels  in  which  they  could 
go  get  a  bath,  if  they  waited  long  enough  or  had  the  luck 
to  be  early  on  the  list.  There  were  stieets  of  shops  with 
plate-glass  windows  unbroken,  shining,  beautiful.  There 
were  well-dressed  women  walking  about,  with  kind  eyes, 
and  children  as  dainty,  some  of  them,  as  in  High  Street, 
Kensington,    or    Prince's    Street,    Edinburgh.      Young 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  289 

officers,  who  had  plenty  of  money  to  spend — because 
there  was  no  chance  of  spending  money  between  a  row 
of  blasted  trees  and  a  ditch  in  which  bits  of  dead  men 
were  plastered  into  the  parapet — invaded  the  shops  and 
bought  fancy  soaps,  razors,  hair-oil,  stationery,  pocket- 
books,  knives,  flash-lamps,  top-boots  (at  a  fabulous  price), 
khaki  shirts  and  collars,  gramophone  records,  and  the 
latest  set  of  Kirchner  prints.  It  was  the  delight  of 
spending,  rather  than  the  joy  of  possessing,  which  made 
them  go  from  one  shop  to  another  in  search  of  things  they 
could  carry  back  to  the  line — that  and  the  lure  of  girls 
behind  the  counters,  laughing,  bright-eyed  girls  who 
understood  their  execrable  French,  even  English  spoken 
with  a  Glasgow  accent,  and  were  pleased  to  flirt  for  five 
minutes  with  any  group  of  young  fighting-men — who 
broke  into  roars  of  laughter  at  the  gallantry  of  some 
Don  Juan  among  them  with  the  gift  of  audacity,  and 
paid  outrageous  prices  for  the  privilege  of  stammering 
out  some  foolish  sentiment  in  broken  French,  blushing 
to  the  roots  of  their  hair  (though  captains  and  heroes) 
at  their  own  temerity  with  a  girl  who,  in  another  five 
minutes,  would  play  the  same  part  in  the  same  scene 
with  a  different  group  of  boys. 

I  used  to  marvel  at  the  patience  of  these  girls.  How 
bored  they  must  have  been  with  all  this  flirtation,  which 
led  to  nothing  except,  perhaps,  the  purchase  of  a  bit  of 
soap  at  twice  its  proper  price!  They  knew  that  these 
boys  would  have  to  go  back  to  the  trenches  in  a  few  hours 
and  that  some  of  them  would  certainly  be  dead  in  a  few 
days.  There  could  be  no  romantic  episode,  save  of  a 
transient  kind,  between  them  and  these  good-looking  lads 
in  whose  eyes  there  were  desire  and  hunger,  because  to 
them  the  plainest  girl  was  Womanhood,  the  sweet,  gentle, 
and  feminine  side  of  life,  as  opposed  to  the  cruelty,  bru- 
tality, and  ugliness  of  war  and  death.  The  shopgirls 
of  Amiens  had  no  illusions.  They  had  lived  too  long  in 
war  not  to  know  the  realities.  They  knew  the  risks  of 
transient  love  and  they  were  not  taking  them — unless 


290  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

conditions  were  very  favorable.  They  attended  strictly 
to  business  and  hoped  to  make  a  lot  of  money  in  the  shop, 
and  were,  I  think,  mostly  good  girls — as  virtuous  as  life 
in  war-time  may  let  girls  be — wise  beyond  their  years, 
and  with  pity  behind  their  laughter  for  these  soldiers 
who  tried  to  touch  their  hands  over  the  counters,  knowing 
that  many  of  them  were  doomed  to  die  for  France  and 
England.  They  had  their  own  lovers — boys  in  blue 
somewhere  between  Vaux-sur-Somme  and  Hartmanns- 
weilerkopf — and  apart  from  occasional  intimacies  with 
English  officers  quartered  in  Amiens  for  long  spells, 
left  the  traffic  of  passion  to  other  women  who  walked  the 
streets. 

II 

The  Street  of  the  Three  Pebbles — la  rue  des  Trois 
Cailloux — which  goes  up  from  the  station  through  the 
heart  of  Amiens,  was  the  crowded  highway.  Here  were 
the  best  shops — the  hairdresser,  at  the  left-hand  side, 
where  all  day  long  officers  down  from  the  line  came  in 
to  have  elaborate  luxury  in  the  way  of  close  crops  with 
frictio7i  d'eau  de  quinine,  shampooing,  singeing,  oiling,  not 
because  of  vanity,  but  because  of  the  joyous  sense  of  clean- 
liness and  perfume  after  the  filth  and  stench  of  life  in  the 
desolate  fields;  then  the  booksellers'  (Madame  Carpen- 
tier  et  fille)  on  the  right-hand  side,  which  was  not  only 
the  rendezvous  of  the  miscellaneous  crowd  buying  sta- 
tionery and  La  Vie  Parisienne,  but  of  the  intellectuals 
who  spoke  good  French  and  bought  good  books  and  liked 
ten  minutes'  chat  with  the  mother  and  daughter.  (Ma- 
dame was  an  Alsatian  lady  with  vivid  memories  of  1870, 
when,  as  a  child,  she  had  first  learned  to  hate  Germans.) 
She  hated  them  now  with  a  fresh,  vital  hatred,  and  would 
have  seen  her  own  son  dead  a  hundred  times — he  was  a 
soldier  in  Saloniki — rather  than  that  France  should  make 
a  compromise  peace  with  the  enemy.  She  had  been  in 
Amiens,  as  I  was,  on  a  dreadful  night  of  August  of  1914, 
when  the  French  army  passed  through  in  retreat  from 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  291 

Bapaume,  and  she  and  the  people  of  her  city  knew  for 
the  first  time  that  the  Germans  were  close  upon  them. 
She  stood  in  the  crowd  as  I  did — -in  the  darkness,  watch- 
ing that  French  column  pass  with  their  transport,  and 
their  wounded  lying  on  the  baggage  wagons,  men  of  many 
regiments  mixed  up,  the  light  of  the  street  lamps  shining 
on  the  casques  of  cuirassiers  with  their  long  horsehair 
tails,  leading  their  stumbling  horses,  and  foot  soldiers, 
hunched  under  their  packs,  marching  silently  with  drag- 
ging steps.  Once  in  a  while  one  of  the  soldiers  left  the 
ranks  and  came  on  to  the  sidewalk,  whispering  to  a  group 
of  dark  shadows.  The  crov/ds  watched  silently,  in  a 
curious,  dreadful  silence,  as  though  stunned.  A  woman 
near  me  spoke  in  a  low  voice,  and  said,  '^  Nous  sommes 
perdus!"  Those  were  the  only  words  I  heard  or  re- 
membered. 

That  night  in  the  station  of  Amiens  the  boys  of  a  new 
class  were  being  hurried  away  in  truck  trains,  and  while 
their  army  was  in  retreat  sang  "La  Marseillaise,"  as 
though  victory  were  in  their  hearts.  Next  day  the 
German  army  under  von  Kluck  entered  Amiens,  and  ten 
days  afterward  passed  through  it  on  the  way  to  Paris. 
Madame  Carpentier  told  me  of  the  first  terror  of  the  peo- 
ple when  the  field-gray  men  came  down  the  Street  of  the 
Three  Pebbles  and  entered  their  shops.  A  boy  selling 
oranges  fainted  when  a  German  stretched  out  his  hand 
to  buy  some.  Women  hid  behind  their  counters  when 
German  boots  stamped  into  their  shops.  But  Madame 
Carpentier  was  not  afraid.  She  knew  the  Germans  and 
their  language.  She  spoke  frank  words  to  German  officers, 
who  saluted  her  respectfully  enough.  "You  will  never 
get  to  Paris.  .  .  .  France  and  England  will  be  too  strong 
for  you.  .  .  .  Germany  will  be  destroyed  before  this  war 
ends."  ~  They  laughed  at  her  and  said:  "We  shall  be  in 
Paris  in  a  week  from  now.  Have  you  a  little  diary, 
Madame?"  Madame  Carpentier  was  haughty  with 
them.  Some  women  of  Amiens— poor  drabs — did  not 
show  any  haughtiness,  nor   any  pride,  with  the  enemy 


igt  Now  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

who  crowded  into  the  city  on  their  way  toward  Paris. 
A  girl  told  me  that  she  was  looking  through  the  window 
of  a  house  that  faced  the  Place  de  la  Gare,  and  saw  a 
number  of  German  soldiers  dancing  round  a  piano-organ 
which  was  playing  to  them.  They  were  dancing  with 
women  of  the  town,  who  were  laughing  and  screeching 
in  the  embrace  of  big,  blond  Germans.  The  girl  who  was 
watching  was  only  a  schoolgirl  then.  She  knew  very 
little  of  the  evil  of  life,  but  enough  to  know  that  there 
was  something  in  this  scene  degrading  to  womanhood 
and  to  France.  She  turned  from  the  window  and  flung 
herself  on  her  bed  and  wept  bitterly.  .  .  . 

I  used  to  call  in  at  the  bookshop  for  a  chat  now  and 
then  with  Madame  and  Mademoiselle  Carpentier,  while 
a  crowd  of  officers  came  in  and  out.  Madame  was  always 
merry  and  bright  in  spite  of  her  denunciations  of  the 
''Sale  Bodies — les  brigands,  les  bandits!'"  and  Mademoiselle 
put  my  knowledge  of  French  to  a  severe  but  pleasant 
test.  She  spoke  with  alarming  rapidity,  her  words 
tumbling  over  one  another  in  a  cascade  of  volubility  de- 
lightful to  hear  but  difficult  to  follow.  She  had  a  strong 
mind — masterly  in  her  methods  of  business — so  that  she 
could  serve  six  customers  at  once  and  make  each  one 
think  that  her  attention  was  entirely  devoted  to  his  needs 
— and  a  very  shrewd  and  critical  idea  of  military  strategy 
and  organization.  She  had  but  a  poor  opinion  of  British 
generals  and  generalship,  although  a  wholehearted  ad- 
miration for  the  gallantry  of  British  officers  and  men; 
and  she  had  an  intimate  knowledge  of  our  preparations, 
plans,  failures,  and  losses.  Prench  liaison-officers  con- 
fided to  her  the  secrets  of  the  British  army;  and  English 
officers  trusted  her  with  many  revelations  of  things  "in 
the  wind."  But  Mademoiselle  Carpentier  had  discretion 
and  loyalty  and  did  not  repeat  these  things  to  people 
who  had  no  right  to  know.  She  would  have  been  far 
more  efficient  as  a  staff'-officcr  than  many  of  the  young 
gentlemen  with  red  tabs  on  their  tunics  who  came  into 
the  shop,  flipping  beautiful  top-boots  with  riding-crops, 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  293 

sitting  on  the  counter,   and  turning  over  the  pages  of 
La  Vie  for  the  latest  convention  in  ladies'  legs. 

Mademoiselle  was  a  serious  musician,  so  her  mother  told 
me,  but  her  musical  studies  were  seriously  interrupted  by 
business  and  air  raids,  which  one  day  ceased  in  Amiens 
altogether  after  a  night  of  horror,  when  hundreds  of 
houses  were  smashed  to  dust  and  many  people  killed,  and 
the  Germans  brought  their  guns  close  to  the  city — close 
enough  to  scatter  high  velocities  about  its  streets — and 
the  population  came  up  out  of  their  cellars,  shaken  by 
the  terror  of  the  night,  and  fled.  I  passed  the  bookshop 
where  Mademoiselle  was  locking  up  the  door  of  this 
house  which  had  escaped  by  greater  luck  than  its  neigh- 
bors. She  turned  as  I  passed  and  raised  her  hand  with 
a  grave  gesture  of  resignation  and  courage.  '^  lis  ne 
passcront  pas!''  she  said.  It  was  the  spirit  of  the  courage 
of  French  womanhood  which  spoke  in  those  words. 

Ill 

That  was  in  the  last  phase  of  the  war,  but  the  Street 
of  the  Three  Pebbles  had  been  tramped  up  and  down 
for  two  years  before  then  by  the  British  armies  on  the 
Somme,  with  the  French  on  their  right.  I  was  never 
tired  of  watching  those  crowds  and  getting  into  the  midst 
of  them,  and  studying  their  types.  All  the  types  of 
young  English  manhood  came  down  this  street,  and  some 
of  their  faces  showed  the  strain  and  agony  of  war,  espe- 
cially toward  the  end  of  the  Somme  battles,  after  four 
months  or  more  of  slaughter.  I  saw  boys  with  a  kind  of 
hunted  look  in  their  eyes;  and  Death  was  the  hunter. 
They  stared  into  the  shop  windows  in  a  dazed  way,  or 
strode  along  with  packs  on  their  backs,  looking  neither  to 
the  right  nor  to  the  left,  and  white,  haggard  faces,  as  ex- 
pressionless as  masks.  To-morrow  or  the  next  day,  per- 
haps, the  Hunter  would  track  them  down.  Other  English 
officers  showed  no  sign  at  all  of  apprehension  or  lack  of 

nerve-control,  although  the  psychologist  would  have  de- 
20 


294  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

tected  disorder  of  soul  in  the  rather  dehberate  note  of 
hilarity  with  which  they  greeted  their  friends,  in  gusts  of 
laughter,  for  no  apparent  cause,  at  "Charhe's  bar,"  where 
they  would  drink  three  cocktails  apiece  on  an  empty 
stomach,  and  in  their  tendency  to  tell  tales  of  horror  as 
things  that  were  very  funny.  They  dined  and  wined  in 
Amiens  at  the  "Rhin,"  the  "Godebert,"  or  the  "Cathe- 
drale,"  with  a  kind  of  spiritual  exaltation  in  good  food 
and  drink,  as  though  subconsciously  they  believed  that 
this  might  be  their  last  dinner  in  life,  with  good  pals 
about  them.  They  wanted  to  make  the  best  of  it — and 
damn  the  price.  In  that  spirit  many  of  them  went  after 
other  pleasures — down  the  byways  of  the  city,  and 
damned  the  price  again,  which  was  a  hellish  one.  Who 
blames  them.^  It  was  war  that  was  to  blame,  and  those 
who  made  war  possible. 

Down  the  rue  des  Trois  Cailloux,  up  and  down,  up  and 
down,  went  English,  and  Scottish,  and  Irish,  and  Welsh, 
and  Canadian,  and  Australian,  and  New  Zealand  fighting- 
men.  In  the  winter  they  wore  their  trench-coats  all 
splashed  and  caked  up  to  the  shoulders  with  the  white, 
chalky  mud  of  the  Somme  battlefields,  and  their  top- 
boots  and  puttees  were  plastered  with  this  mud,  and  their 
faces  were  smeared  with  it  after  a  lorry  drive  or  a  tramp 
down  from  the  line.  The  rain  beat  with  a  metalHc  tattoo 
on  their  steel  hats.     Their  packs  were  all  sodden. 

French  poilus,  detrained  at  Amiens  station  for  a  night 
on  their  way  to  some  other  part  of  the  front,  jostled 
among  British  soldiers,  and  their  packs  were  a  wonder 
to  see.  They  were  like  traveling  tinkers,  with  pots 
and  pans  and  boots  slung  about  their  faded  blue  coats, 
and  packs  bulging  with  all  the  primitive  needs  of  Hfe 
in  the  desert  of  the  battlefields  beyond  civilization. 
They  were  unshaven,  and  wore  their  steel  casques  low 
over  their  foreheads,  without  gaiety,  without  the  means 
of  buying  a  little  false  hilarity,  but  grim  and  sullen- 
looking  and  resentful  of  English  soldiers  walking  or 
talking  with  French  cocottes. 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CIT\'  295 

IV 

I  saw  a  scene  with  a  French  poilu  one  day  in  the  Street 
of  the  Three  Pebbles,  during  those  battles  of  the  Somme, 
when  the  French  troops  were  fighting  on  our  right  from 
Maricourt  southward  toward  Roye.  It  was  like  a  scene 
from  "Gaspard."  The  poilu  was  a  middle-aged  man,  and 
very  drunk  on  some  foul  spirit  which  he  had  bought  in  a 
low  cafe  down  by  the  river.  In  the  High  Street  he  was 
noisy,  and  cursed  God  for  having  allowed  the  war  to 
happen,  and  the  French  government  for  having  sen- 
tenced him  and  all  poor  sacre  poilus  to  rot  to  death 
in  the  trenches,  away  from  their  wives  and  children, 
without  a  thought  for  them;  and  nothing  but  treachery 
in  Paris: 

"Nous  sommes  trahis!"  said  the  man,  raising  his  arms. 
"For  the  hundredth  time  France  is  betrayed." 

A  crowd  gathered  round  him,  listening  to  his  drunken 
denunciations.  No  one  laughed.  They  stared  at  him 
with  a  kind  of  pitying  wonderment.  An  agent  de  police 
pushed  his  way  between  the  people  and  caught  hold  of 
the  soldier  by  the  wrist  and  tried  to  drag  him  away.  The 
crowd  murmured  a  protest,  and  then  suddenly  the  poilu, 
finding  himself  in  the  hands  of  the  police,  on  this  one  day 
out  of  the  trenches — after  five  months — flung  himself  on 
the  pavement  in  a  passion  of  tears  and  supplication. 

"/^  suis  pere  de  famille!  .  .  .  Je  suis  un  sold  at  de 
France!  .  .  .  Dans  les  tranchees  pour  cinq  mois!  .  .  . 
Qu'est-ce  que  vies  camarades  vont  dire,  ^cr'e  nom  de  Dieu?  et 
mon  capitaine?  C'est  emmordant  apres  toute  ma  service 
comme  brave  soldat.     Mais,  quoi  done,  mo7i  vieuxl" 

"Fie7is  done,  saligaud,"  growled  the  agent  de  police. 

The  crowd  was  against  the  policeman.  Their  murmurs 
rose  to  violent  protest  on  behalf  of  the  poilu. 

^^C'est  U7i  heros,  tout  de  mhne.  Cinq  mois  dans  les 
tranchees!  Cest  affreux!  Mais  oui,  il  est  soul,  mais  pour- 
quoi  pas!  Apres  cinq  mois  sur  le  front  qiiest-ce  que  cela 
sig7iifie?     Qa  na  aucune  importance!''^ 


296  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

A  dandy  French  officer  of  Chasseurs  Alpins  stepped  into 
the  center  of  the  scene  and  tapped  the  policeman  on  the 
shoulder. 

** Leave  him  alone.  Don't  you  see  he  is  a  soldier? 
Sacred  name  of  God,  don't  you  know  that  a  man  like  this 
has  helped  to  save  France,  while  you  pigs  stand  at  street 
corners  watching  petticoats?" 

He  stooped  to  the  fallen  man  and  helped  him  to  stand 
straight. 

"BeofFwith  you,  mon  brave,  or  there  will  be  trouble 
for  you." 

He  beckoned  to  two  of  his  own  Chasseurs  and  said: 

*'Look  after  that  poor  comrade  yonder.     He  is  un  peu 
'.   •1''  >» 
etoile. 

The  crowd  applauded.    Their  sympathy  was  all  for 

the  drunken  soldier  of  France. 


Into  a  small  estaminet  at  the  end  of  the  rue  des  Trois 
Cailloux,  beyond  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  came  one  day  during 
the  battles  of  the  Somme  two  poilus,  grizzled,  heavy 
men,  deeply  bronzed,  with  white  dust  in  their  wrinkles, 
and  the  earth  of  the  battlefields  ingrained  in  the  skin  of 
their  big,  coarse  hands.  They  ordered  two  "little 
glasses"  and  drank  them  at  one  gulp.     Then  two  more. 

**See  what  I  have  got,  my  little  cabbage,"  said  one  of 
them,  stooping  to  the  heavy  pack  which  he  had  shifted 
from  his  shoulders  to  the  other  seat  beside  him.  "It  is 
something  to  make  you  laugh." 

"And  what  is  that,  my  old  one?"  said  a  woman  sitting 
on  the  other  side  of  the  marble-topped  table,  with  another 
woman  of  her  own  class,  from  the  market  nearby. 

The  man  did  not  answer  the  question,  but  fumbled  into 
his  pack,  laughing  a  little  in  a  self-satisfied  way. 

"I  killed  a  German  to  get  it,"  he  said.  "He  was  a  pig 
of  an  officer,  a  dirty  Boche.  Very  chic,  too,  and  young  like 
a  schoolboy." 


THE  HEART  OF  A  crrV  297 

One  of  the  women  patted  him  on  the  shoulder.  Her 
eyes  glistened, 

"Did  you  slit  his  throat,  the  dirty  dog?  Eh,  I'd  Hke 
to  get  my  fingers  round  the  neck  of  a  dirty  Boche!" 

"I  finished  him  with  a  grenade,"  said  the  poilu.  "It 
was  good  enough.  It  knocked  a  hole  in  him  as  large  as 
a  cemetery.  See  then,  my  cabbage.  It  will  make  you 
smile.     It  is  a  funny  kind  of  mascot,  eh  ? " 

He  put  on  the  table  a  small  leather  pouch  stained  with 
a  blotch  of  reddish  brown.  His  big,  clumsy  fingers  could 
hardly  undo  the  little  clasp. 

"He  wore  this  next  his  heart,"  said  the  man.  "Per- 
haps he  thought  it  would  bring  him  luck.  But  I  killed 
him  all  the  same!     'Cre  nom  de  Dieu!" 

He  undid  the  clasp,  and  his  big  fingers  poked  inside  the 
flap  of  the  pouch. 

"It  was  from  his  woman,  his  German  grue.  Perhaps 
even  now  she  doesn't  know  he's  dead.  She  thinks  of  him 
wearing  this  next  to  his  heart.  'Cre  nom  de  Dieu!  It 
was  I  that  killed  him  a  week  ago!" 

He  held  up  something  in  his  hand,  and  the  light  through 
the  estaminet  window  gleamed  on  it.  It  was  a  woman's 
lock  of  hair,  like  fine-spun  gold. 

The  two  women  gave  a  shrill  cry  of  surprise,  and  then 
screamed  with  laughter.  One  of  them  tried  to  grab  the 
hair,  but  the  poilu  held  it  high,  beyond  her  reach,  with  a 
gruflf  command  of,  "Hands  off!"  Other  soldiers  and 
women  in  the  estaminet  gathered  round  staring  at  the 
yellow  tress,  laughing,  making  ribald  conjectures  as  to 
the  character  of  the  woman  from  whose  head  it  had  come. 
They  agreed  that  she  was  fat  and  ugly,  like  all  German 
women,  and  a  foul  slut. 

"She'll  never  kiss  that  fellow  again,"  said  one  man. 
"Our  old  one  has  cut  the  throat  o^  that  pig  of  a  Boche!" 

"I'd  like  to  cut  off  all  her  hair  and  tear  the  clothes  off 
her  back,"  said  one  of  the  women.  "The  dirty  drab  with 
yellow  hair!  They  ought  to  be  killed,  every  one  of  them, 
so  that  the  human  race  should  be  rid  of  them  I " 


298  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"Her  lover  is  a  bit  of  clay,  anyhow,"  said  the  other 
woman.  "A  bit  of  dirt,  as  our  poilus  will  do  for  all  of 
them." 

The  soldier  with  the  woman's  hair  in  his  hand  stroked 
it  across  his  forefinger. 

"All  the  same  it  is  pretty.  Like  gold,  eh.^  I  think  of 
the  woman,  sometimes.  With  blue  eyes,  like  a  German 
girl  I  kissed  in  Paris — a  dancing-girl!" 

There  was  a  howl  of  laughter  from  the  two  women. 

"The  old  one  is  drunk.  He  is  amorous  with  the  Ger- 
man cow!" 

"I  will  keep  it  as  a  mascot,"  said  the  poilu,  scrunching 
it  up  and  thrusting  it  into  his  pouch.  "It  '11  keep  me 
in  mind  of  that  saligaud  of  a  German  officer  1  killed. 
Lie  was  a  chic  fellow,  tout  de  meme.     A  boy." 


VI 

Australians  slouched  up  the  Street  of  the  Three  Pebbles 
with  a  grim  look  under  their  wide-brimmed  hats,  having 
come  down  from  Pozieres,  where  it  was  always  hell  in  the 
days  of  the  Somme  fighting.  I  liked  the  look  of  them, 
dusty  up  to  the  eyes  in  summer,  muddy  up  to  their  eyes 
in  winter — these  gipsy  fellows,  scornful  of  discipline  for 
discipline's  sake,  but  desperate  fighters,  as  simple  as  chil- 
dren in  their  ways  of  thought  and  speech  (except  for 
frightful  oaths),  and  looking  at  life,  this  life  of  war  and 
this  life  in  Amiens,  with  frank,  curious  eyes,  and  a  kind  of 
humorous  contempt  for  death,  and  disease,  and  English 
Tommies,  and  French  girls,  and  "the  whole  damned 
show,"  as  they  called  it.  They  were  lawless  except  for 
the  laws  to  which  their  souls  gave  allegiance.  They  be- 
haved as  the  equals  of  all  men,  giving  no  respect  to 
generals  or  staff-officers  or  the  devils  of  hell.  There  was 
a  primitive  spirit  of  manhood  in  them,  and  they  took 
what  they  wanted,  and  were  ready  to  pay  for  it  in  coin 
or  in  disease  or  in  wounds.  They  had  no  conceit  of  them- 
selves in  a  little,  vain  way,  but  they  reckoned  themselves 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  299 

the  only  fighting-men,  simply,  and  without  boasting. 
They  were  hard  as  steel,  and  finely  tempered.  Some  of 
them  were  ruflSans,  but  most  of  them  were,  I  imagine,  like 
those  EngHsh  yeomen  who  came  into  France  with  the 
Black  Prince,  men  who  lived  "rough,"  close  to  nature,  of 
sturdy  independence,  good-humored,  though  fierce  in  a 
fight,  and  ruthless.  That  is  how  they  seemed  to  me,  in 
a  general  way,  though  among  them  were  boys  of  a  more 
deHcate  fiber,  and  sensitive,  if  one  might  judge  by  their 
clear-cut  features  and  wistful  eyes.  They  had  money  to 
spend  beyond  the  dreams  of  our  poor  Tommy.  Six  shil- 
lings and  sixpence  a  day  and  remittances  from  home.  So 
they  pushed  open  the  doors  of  any  restaurant  in  Amiens 
and  sat  down  to  table  next  to  English  officers,  not 
abashed,  and  ordered  anything  that  pleased  their  taste, 
and  wine  in  plenty. 

In  that  High  Street  of  Amiens  one  day  I  saw  a  crowd 
gathered  round  an  Australian,  so  tall  that  he  towered  over 
all  other  heads.  It  was  at  the  corner  of  the  rue  du  Corps 
Nu  sans  Teste,  the  Street  of  the  Naked  Body  without  a 
Head,  and  I  suspected  trouble.  As  I  pressed  on  the  edge 
of  the  crowd  I  heard  the  Australian  ask,  in  a  loud,  slow 
drawl,  whether  there  was  any  officer  about  who  could 
speak  French.  He  asked  the  question  gravely,  but  with- 
out anxiety.  I  pushed  through  the  crowd  and  said: 
"I  speak  French.     What's  the  trouble?" 

I  saw  then  that,  like  the  French  poilu  I  have  described, 
this  tall  Austrahan  was  in  the  grasp  of  a  French  agent  de 
police,  a  small  man  of  whom  he  took  no  more  notice  than 
if  a  fly  had  settled  on  his  wrist.  The  Austrahan  was  not 
drunk.  I  could  see  that  he  had  just  drunk  enough  to 
make  his  brain  very  clear  and  solemn.  He  explained  the 
matter  deliberately,  with  a  slow  choice  of  words,  as 
though  giving  evidence  of  high  matters  before  a  court. 
It  appeared  that  he  had  gone  into  the  estaminet  opposite 
with  four  friends.  They  had  ordered  five  glasses  of  porto, 
for  which  they  had  paid  twenty  centimes  each,  and  drank 
them.      They  then  ordered  five  more  glasses  of  porto  and 


300  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOT.D 

paid  the  same  price,  and  drank  them.  After  this  they 
took  a  stroll  up  and  down  the  street,  and  were  bored,  and 
went  into  the  estamhiet  again,  and  ordered  five  more 
glasses  of  porto.  It  was  then  the  trouble  began.  But  it 
was  not  the  Australian  who  began  it.  It  was  the  woman 
behind  the  bar.  She  served  five  glasses  more  oi  porto  and 
asked  for  thirty  centimes  each. 

"Twenty  centimes,"  said  the  Australian.  "Vingt, 
Madame." 

"Mais  non!  Trente  centimes,  chaque  verre!  Thirty, 
my  old  one.     Six  sous,  comprenez?" 

"No  comprennye,"  said  the  Australian.  *'Vingt  cen- 
times, or  go  to  hell." 

The  woman  demanded  the  thirty  centimes;  kept  on 
demanding  with  a  voice  more  shrill. 

"It  was  her  voice  that  vexed  me,"  said  the  Australian. 
"That  and  the  bloody  injustice." 

The  five  Australians  drank  the  five  glasses  of  porto,  and 
the  tall  Australian  paid  the  thirty  centimes  each  without 
further  argument.  Life  is  too  short  for  argument.  Then, 
without  words,  he  took  each  of  the  five  glasses,  broke  it 
at  the  stem,  and  dropped  it  over  the  counter. 

"You  will  see,  sir,"  he  said,  gravely,  "the  justice  of  the 
matter  on  my  side." 

But  when  they  left  the  estaminet  the  woman  came 
shrieking  into  the  street  after  them.  Hence  the  agent  de 
police  and  the  grasp  on  the  Australian's  wrist. 

"I  should  be  glad  if  you  would  explain  the  case  to  this 
little  Frenchman,"  said  the  soldier.  "If  he  does  not 
take  his  hand  off  my  wrist  I  shall  have  to  kill  him." 

"Perhaps  a  little  explanation  might  serve,"  I  said. 

I  spoke  to  the  agent  de  police  at  some  length,  describing 
the  incident  in  the  cafe.  I  took  the  view  that  the  lady 
was  wrong  in  increasing  the  price  so  rapidly.  The  agent 
agreed  gravely.  I  then  pointed  out  that  the  Australian 
was  a  very  large-sized  man,  and  that  in  spite  of  his  quie- 
tude he  was  a  man  in  the  habit  of  killing  Germans.  He 
,1180  had  a  curious  dislike  of  policemeP: 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  joi 

"It  appears  to  me,"  I  said,  politely,  "that  for  the  sake 
of  your  health  the  other  end  of  the  street  is  better  than 
this." 

The  agent  dc  -police  released  his  grip  from  the  Aus- 
tralian's wrist  and  saluted  me. 

"Voiis  avez  raison,  monsieur.  Je  vous  remercie.  Ces 
Australiens  sont  vraiment  formidables,  n'est-ce  pas.^" 

He  disappeared  through  the  crowd,  who  were  smiling 
with  a  keen  sense  of  understanding.  Only  the  lady  of 
the  estaminet  was  unappeased. 

"They  are  bandits,  these  Australians!"  she  said  to  the 
world  about  her. 

The  tall  Australian  shook  hands  with  me  in  a  comradely 
way. 

"Thanks  for  your  trouble,"  he  said.  "It  was  the  in- 
justice I  couldn't  stick.  I  always  pay  the  right  price.  I 
come  from  AustraHa." 

I  watched  him  go  slouching  down  the  rue  des  Trois 
Cailloux,  head  above  all  the  passers-by.  He  would  be 
at  Pozieres  again  next  day. 


VII 

I  was  billeted  for  a  time  with  other  war  correspondents 
in  an  old  house  in  the  rue  Amiral  Courbet,  on  the  way  to 
the  river  Somme  from  the  Street  of  the  Three  Pebbles, 
and  with  a  view  of  the  spire  of  the  cathedral,  a  wonderful 
thing  of  delicate  lines  and  tracery,  graven  with  love  in 
every  line,  by  Muirhead  Bone,  and  from  my  dormer  win- 
dow. It  was  the  house  of  Mme.  de  la  Rochefoucauld, 
who  lived  farther  out  of  the  town,  but  drove  in  now  and 
then  to  look  at  this  little  mansion  of  hers  at  the  end  of  a 
courtyard  behind  wrought-iron  gates.  It  was  built  in 
the  days  before  the  Revolution,  when  it  was  dangerous 
to  be  a  fine  lady  with  the  name  of  Rochefoucauld.  The 
furniture  was  rather  scanty,  and  was  of  the  Louis  Quinze 
and  Empire  periods.  Some  portraits  of  old  gentlemen  and 
ladies  of  France,  with  one  young  fellow  in  a  scarlet  coat, 


303  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

who  might  have  been  in  the  King's  Company  of  the 
Guard  about  the  time  when  Wolfe  scaled  the  Heights  of 
Abraham,  summoned  up  the  ghosts  of  the  house,  and  I" 
liked  to  think  of  them  in  these  rooms  and  going  in  their 
sedan-chairs  across  the  little  courtyard  to  high  mass  at 
the  cathedral  or  to  a  game  of  bezique  in  some  other 
mansion,  still  standing  in  the  quiet  streets  of  Amiens, 
unless  in  a  day  in  March  of  1918  they  were  destroyed  with 
many  hundreds  of  houses  by  bombs  and  gun-fire.  My 
little  room  was  on  the  floor  below  the  garret,  and  here  at 
night,  after  a  long  day  in  the  fields  up  by  Pozieres  or 
Martinpuich  or  beyond,  by  Ligny-Tilloy,  on  the  way  to 
Bapaume,  in  the  long  struggle  and  slaughter  over  every 
inch  of  ground,  I  used  to  write  my  day's  despatch,  to  be 
taken  next  day  (it  was  before  we  were  allowed  to  use  the 
military  wires)  by  King's  Messenger  to  England. 

Those  articles,  written  at  high  speed,  with  an  impres- 
sionism born  out  of  many  new  memories  of  tragic  and 
heroic  scenes,  were  interrupted  sometimes  by  air-bom- 
bardments. Hostile  airmen  came  often  to  Amiens  dur- 
ing the  Somme  fighting,  to  unload  their  bombs  as  near  to 
the  station  as  they  could  guess,  which  was  not  often  very 
near.  Generally  they  killed  a  few  women  and  children 
and  knocked  a  few  poor  houses  and  a  shop  or  two  into  a 
wild  rubbish  heap  of  bricks  and  timber.  While  I  wrote, 
listening  to  the  crashing  of  glass  and  the  anti-aircraft  fire 
of  French  guns  from  the  citadel,  I  used  to  wonder  sub- 
consciously whether  I  should  suddenly  be  hurled  into 
chaos  at  the  end  of  an  unfinished  sentence,  and  now  and 
again  in  spite  of  my  desperate  conflict  with  time  to  get 
my  message  done  (the  censors  were  waiting  for  it  down- 
stairs) I  had  to  get  up  and  walk  into  the  passage  to  listen 
to  the  infernal  noise  in  the  dark  city  of  Amiens.  But  I 
went  back  again  and  bent  over  my  paper,  concentrating 
on  the  picture  of  war  which  I  was  trying  to  set  down  so 
that  the  world  might  see  and  understand,  until  once 
again,  ten  minutes  later  or  so,  my  will-power  would 
weaken  and  the  little  devil  of  fear  would  creep  up  to  my 


THE   HEART  OF  A  CITY  303 

heart  and  I  would  go  uneasily  to  the  door  again  to  listen. 
Then  once  more  to  my  writing.  .  .  .  Nothing  touched  the 
house  in  the  rue  Amiral  Courbet  while  we  were  there. 
But  it  was  into  my  bedroom  that  a  shell  went  crashing 
after  that  night  in  March  when  Amiens  was  badly 
wrecked,  and  we  listened  to  the  noise  of  destruction  all 
around  us  from  a  room  in  the  Hotel  du  Rhin  on  the  other 
side  of  the  way.  I  should  have  been  sleeping  still  if  I 
had  slept  that  night  in  my  little  old  bedroom  when  the 
shell  paid  a  visit. 

There  were  no  lights  allowed  at  night  in  Amiens,  and 
when  I  think  of  darkness  I  think  of  that  city  in  time  of 
war,  when  all  the  streets  were  black  tunnels  and  one 
fumbled  one's  way  timidly,  if  one  had  no  flash-lamp, 
between  the  old  houses  with  their  pointed  gables,  coming 
into  sharp  collision  sometimes  with  other  wayfarers. 
But  up  to  midnight  there  were  Httle  lights  flashing  for  a 
second  and  then  going  out,  along  the  Street  of  the  Three 
Pebbles  and  in  the  dark  corners  of  side-streets.  They 
were  carried  by  girls  seeking  to  entice  English  officers  on 
their  way  to  their  billets,  and  they  clustered  like  glow- 
worms about  the  side  door  of  the  Hotel  du  Rhin  after 
nine  o'clock,  and  outside  the  railings  of  the  public  gardens. 
As  one  passed,  the  bright  bull's-eye  from  a  pocket  torch 
flashed  in  one's  eyes,  and  in  the  radiance  of  it  one  saw  a 
girl's  face,  laughing,  coming  very  close,  while  her  fingers 
felt  for  one's  badge. 

"How  dark  it  is  to-night,  little  captain!  Are  you  not 
afraid  of  darkness.''  I  am  full  of  fear.  It  is  so  sad,  this 
war,  so  dismal!  It  is  comradeship  that  helps  one  now! 
...  A  little  love  ...  a  little  laughter,  and  then — ^who 
knows?" 

A  little  love  ...  a  little  laughter — alluring  words  to  boys 
out  of  one  battle,  expecting  another,  hating  it  all,  lonely 
in  their  souls  because  of  the  thought  of  death,  in  exile 
from  their  own  folk,  in  exile  from  all  womanhood  and 
tender,  feminine  things,  up  there  in  the  ditches  and  shell- 
craters  of  the  desert  fields,  or  in  the  huts  of  headquarters 


304  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

staffs,  or  in  reserve  camps  behind  the  fighting-Hne.  A 
little  lo\e,  a  Httle  laughter,  and  then — who  knows?  The 
sirens  had  whispered  their  own  thoughts.  They  had 
translated  into  pretty  French  the  temptation  of  all  the 
little  devils  in  their  souls. 

"Un  peu  d'amour — " 

One  flash-lamp  was  enough  for  two  down  a  narrow 
street  toward  the  riverside,  and  then  up  a  little  dark 
stairway  to  a  lamp-lit  room.  .  .  .  Presently  this  poor  boy 
would  be  stricken  with  disease  and  wish  himself  dead. 


VIII 

In  the  Street  of  the  Three  Pebbles  there  was  a  small 
estammet  into  which  I  went  one  morning  for  a  cup  of 
coffee,  while  I  read  an  Amiens  news-sheet  made  up  mostly 
of  extracts  translated  from  the  leading  articles  of  English 
papers.  (There  was  never  any  news  of  French  fighting 
beyond  the  official  communique  and  imaginary  articles  of 
a  romantic  kind  written  by  French  journalists  in  Paris 
about  episodes  of  war.)  In  one  corner  of  the  estaminet 
was  a  group  of  bourgeois  gentlemen  talking  business  for 
a  time,  and  then  listening  to  a  monologue  from  the 
woman  behind  the  counter.  I  could  not  catch  many 
words  of  the  conversation,  owing  to  the  general  chatter, 
but  when  the  man  went  out  tlie  woman  and  I  were  left 
alone  together,  and  she  came  over  to  me  and  put  a  photo- 
graph down  on  the  table  before  me,  and,  as  though  carry- 
ing on  her  previous  train  of  thought,  said,  in  French,  of 
course: 

**  Yes,  that  is  what  the  war  has  done  to  me." 
I  could  not  guess  her  meaning.  Looking  at  the  photo- 
graph, I  saw  it  was  of  a  young  girl  in  evening  dress  with 
her  hair  coiled  in  an  artistic  way  and  a  little  curl  on  each 
cheek.  Madame's  daughter,  I  thought,  looking  up  at 
the  woman  standing  in  front  of  me  in  a  grubby  bodice 
and  tousled  hair.  She  looked  a  woman  of  about  forty, 
v^ith  a  wan  face  and  beaten  eyes, 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  305 

"A  charming  young  lady,"  I  said,  glancing  again  at  the 
portrait. 

The  woman  repeated  her  last  sentence,  word  for  word. 

"Yes  .  .  .  that  is  what  the  war  has  done  to  me." 

I  looked  up  at  her  again  and  saw  that  she  had  the  face 
of  the  young  girl  in  the  photograph,  but  coarsened,  aged, 
raddled,  by  the  passing  years  and  perhaps  by  tragedy. 

*'It  is  you?"  I  asked. 

"Yes,  in  1913,  before  the  war.  I  have  changed  since 
then — n'est-ce  pas,  Monsieur? 

"There  is  a  change,"  I  said.  I  tried  not  to  express  my 
thought  of  how  much  change. 

"You  have  suffered  in  the  war — more  than  most 
people?" 

"Ah,  I  have  suffered!" 

She  told  me  her  story,  and  word  for  word,  if  I  could 
have  written  it  down  then,  it  would  have  read  like  a  Httle 
novel  by  Guy  de  Maupassant.  She  was  the  daughter  of 
people  in  Lille,  well-to-do  merchants,  and  before  the  war 
married  a  young  man  of  the  same  town,  the  son  of  other 
manufacturers.  They  had  two  children  and  were  very 
happy.  Then  the  war  came.  The  enemy  drove  down 
through  Belgium,  and  one  day  drew  near  and  threatened 
Lille.  The  parents  of  the  young  couple  said:  "We  will 
stay.  We  are  too  old  to  leave  our  home,  and  it  is  better 
to  keep  watch  over  the  factory.  You  must  go,  with  the 
little  ones,  and  there  is  no  time  to  lose." 

There  was  no  time  to  lose.  The  trains  were  crowded 
with  fugitives  and  soldiers — mostly  soldiers.  It  was  nec- 
essary to  walk.  Weeping,  the  young  husband  and  wife 
said  farewell  to  their  parents  and  set  out  on  the  long  trail, 
with  the  two  babies  in  a  perambulator,  under  a  load  of 
bread  and  wine,  and  a  little  maid  carrying  some  clothes 
in  a  bundle.  For  days  they  tramped  the  roads  until  they 
were  all  dusty  and  bedraggled  and  footsore,  but  glad  to 
be  getting  farther  away  from  that  tide  of  field-gray  men 
which  had  now  swamped  over  Lille.  The  young  hus- 
band comforted  his  wife.    "Courage!"  he  said.     "I  have 


3o6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

money  enough  to  carry  us  through  the  war.  We  will  set 
up  a  little  shop  somewhere."  The  maid  wept  bitterly 
now  and  then,  but  the  young  husband  said:  "We  will 
take  care  of  you,  Margot.  There  is  nothing  to  fear.  We 
are  lucky  in  our  escape."  He  was  a  delicate  fellow,  re- 
jected for  military  service,  but  brave.  They  came  to 
Amiens,  and  hired  the  estaminet  and  set  up  business. 
There  was  a  heavy  debt  to  work  off  for  capital  and  ex- 
penses before  they  would  make  money,  but  they  were 
doing  well.  The  mother  was  happy  with  her  children, 
and  the  little  maid  had  dried  her  tears.  Then  one  day 
the  young  husband  went  away  with  the  little  maid  and 
all  the  money,  leaving  his  wife  in  the  estaminet  with  a 
big  debt  to  pay  and  a  broken  heart. 

"That  is  what  the  war  has  done  to  me,"  she  said  again, 
picking  up  the  photograph  of  the  girl  in  the  evening  frock 
with  a  little  curl  on  each  cheek. 

"C'est  triste,  Madame!" 

''Old,  c'est  triste,  Monsieur!" 

But  it  was  not  war  that  had  caused  her  tragedy,  except 
that  it  had  unloosened  the  roots  of  her  family  life.  Guy 
de  Maupassant  would  have  given  just  such  an  ending  to 
his  story. 

IX 

Some  of  our  officers  stationed  in  Amiens,  and  billeted 
in  private  houses,  became  very  friendly  with  the  families 
who  received  them.  Young  girls  of  good  middle  class, 
the  daughters  of  shopkeepers  and  schoolmasters,  and 
merchants  in  a  good  way  of  business,  found  it  delightful 
to  wait  on  handsome  young  Englishmen,  to  teach  them 
French,  to  take  walks  with  them,  and  to  arrange  musical 
evenings  with  other  girl  friends  who  brought  their  young 
officers  and  sang  little  old  French  songs  with  them  or 
English  songs  in  the  prettiest  French  accent.  These 
young  officers  of  ours  found  the  home  life  very  charming. 
It  broke  the  monotony  of  exile  and  made  them  forget  the 
evil  side  of  war.     They  paid  little  gallantries  to  the  girls, 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  307 

bought  them  boxes  of  chocolate  until  fancy  chocolate  was 
forbidden  in  France,  and  presented  flowers  to  decorate 
the  table,  and  wrote  amusing  verses  in  their  autograph 
albums  or  drew  sketches  for  them.  As  this  went  on  they 
gained  to  the  privilege  of  brotherhood,  and  there  were 
kisses  before  saying  "good  night"  outside  bedroom  doors, 
while  the  parents  downstairs  were  not  too  watchful,  know- 
ing the  ways  of  young  people,  and  lenient  because  of  their 
happiness.  Then  a  day  came  in  each  one  of  these  house- 
holds when  the  officer  billeted  there  was  ordered  away  to 
some  other  place.  What  tears!  What  lamentations! 
And  what  promises  never  to  forget  little  Jeanne  with 
her  dark  tresses,  or  Suzanne  with  the  merry  eyes!  Were 
they  not  engaged .f*  Not  formally,  perhaps,  but  in  honor 
and  in  love.  For  a  time  letters  arrived,  eagerly  waited 
for  by  girls  with  aching  hearts.  Then  picture  post-cards 
with  a  Hne  or  two  of  aflPectionate  greeting.  Then  nothing. 
Nothing  at  all,  month  after  month,  in  spite  of  all  the 
letters  addressed  with  all  the  queer  initials  for  military 
units.  So  it  happened  again  and  again,  until  bitterness 
crept  into  girls'  hearts,  and  hardness  and  contempt. 

"In  my  own  little  circle  of  friends,"  said  a  lady  of 
Amiens,  "I  know  eighteen  girls  who  were  engaged  to 
EngHsh  officers  and  have  been  forsaken.  It  is  not  fair. 
It  is  not  good.  Your  English  young  men  seem  so  serious, 
far  more  serious  than  our  French  boys.  They  have  a 
look  of  shyness  which  we  find  delightful.  They  are  timid, 
at  first,  and  blush  when  one  pays  a  pretty  compliment. 
They  are  a  long  time  before  they  take  liberties.  So  we 
trust  them,  and  take  them  seriously,  and  allow  intimacies 
which  we  should  refuse  to  French  boys  unless  formally 
engaged.  But  it  is  all  camouflage.  At  heart  your  Eng- 
hsh  young  men  are  just  flirts.  They  play  with  us,  make 
fools  of  us,  steal  our  hearts,  and  then  go  away,  and  often 
do  not  send  so  much  as  a  post-card.  Not  even  one  little 
post-card  to  the  girls  who  weep  their  hearts  out  for  them! 
You  English  are  all  hypocrites.  You  boast  that  you 
'play  the   game.'     I   know  your  phrase.     It  is  untrue. 


3o8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

You  play  with  good  girls  as  though  they  were  grues,  and 
that  no  Frenchman  would  dare  to  do.  He  knows  the 
difference  between  good  girls  and  bad  girls,  and  behaves, 
with  reverence  to  those  who  are  good.  When  the  English 
army  goes  away  from  France  it  will  leave  many  bitter 
memories  because  of  that." 


It  was  my  habit  to  go  out  at  night  for  a  walk  through 
Amiens  before  going  to  bed,  and  generally  turned  river- 
ward,  for  even  on  moonless  nights  there  was  always  a 
luminance  over  the  water  and  one  could  see  to  walk  along 
the  quayside.  Northward  and  eastward  the  sky  was 
quivering  with  flashes  of  white  light,  like  summer  light- 
ning, and  now  and  then  there  was  a  long,  vivid  glare  of 
red  touching  the  high  clouds  with  rosy  feathers;  one  of 
our  dumps,  or  one  of  the  enemy's,  had  been  blown  up  by 
that  gun-fire,  sullen  and  menacing,  which  never  ceased  for 
years.  In  that  quiet  half-hour,  alone,  or  with  some  com- 
rade, like  Frederic  Palmer  or  Beach  Thomas,  as  tired  and 
as  thoughtful  as  oneself  after  a  long  day's  journeying 
in  the  swirl  of  war,  one's  brain  roved  over  the  scenes  of 
battle,  visualizing  anew,  and  in  imagination,  the  agony 
up  there,  the  death  which  was  being  done  by  those  guns, 
and  the  stupendous  sum  of  all  this  conflict.  We  saw, 
after  all,  only  one  patch  of  the  battlefields  of  the  world, 
and  yet  were  staggered  by  the  immensity  of  its  massacre, 
by  the  endless  streams  of  wounded,  and  by  the  growth  of 
those  little  forests  of  white  crosses  behind  the  fighting- 
lines.  We  knew,  and  could  see  at  any  moment  in  the 
mind's  eye — even  in  the  darkness  of  an  Amiens  night — • 
the  vastness  of  the  human  energy  which  was  in  motion 
along  all  the  roads  to  Paris  and  from  Boulogne  and 
Dieppe  and  Havre  to  the  fighting-lines,  and  in  every 
village  on  the  way  the  long  columns  of  motor-lorries 
bringing  up  food  and  ammunition,  the  trains  on  their 
way  to  the  army  rail-heads  with  material  of  war  and 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  309 

more  food  and  more  shells,  the  Red  Cross  trains  crowded 
with  maimed  and  injured  boys,  the  ambulances  clearing 
the  casualty  stations,  the  troops  marching  forward  from 
back  roads  to  the  front,  from  which  many  would  never 
come  marching  back,  the  guns  and  limbers  and  military 
transports  and  spare  horses,  along  hundreds  of  miles  of 
roads — all  the  machinery  of  slaughter  on  the  move.  It 
was  staggering  in  its  enormity,  in  its  detail,  and  in  its 
activity.  Yet  beyond  our  sphere  in  the  British  section 
of  the  western  front  there  was  the  French  front,  larger 
than  ours,  stretching  right  through  France,  and  all  their 
roads  were  crowded  with  the  same  traffic,  and  all  their 
towns  and  villages  were  stirred  by  the  same  activity  and 
for  the  same  purpose  of  death,  and  all  their  hospitals  v/ere 
crammed  with  the  WTeckage  of  youth.  On  the  other  side 
of  the  lines  the  Germans  were  busy  in  the  same  way,  as 
busy  as  soldier  ants,  and  the  roads  behind  their  front 
were  cumbered  by  endless  columns  of  transport  and 
marching  men,  and  guns  and  ambulances  laden  with 
bashed,  blinded,  and  bleeding  boys.  So  it  was  in  Italy, 
in  Austria,  in  Saloniki,  and  Bulgaria,  Serbia,  Mesopo- 
tamia, Egypt.  ...  In  the  silence  of  Amiens  by  night,  under 
the  stars,  with  a  cool  breath  of  the  night  air  on  our  fore- 
heads, with  a  glamour  of  light  over  the  waters  of  the 
Somme,  our  spirit  was  stricken  by  the  thought  of  this 
world-tragedy,  and  cried  out  in  anguish  against  this 
bloody  crime  in  which  all  humanity  was  involved.  The 
senselessness  of  it!  The  futility!  The  waste!  The 
mockery  of  men's  faith  in  God!  .  .  . 

Often  Palmer  and  I — dear,  grave  old  Palmer,  with 
sphinxlike  face  and  honest  soul — used  to  trudge  along 
silently,  with  just  a  sigh  now  and  then,  or  a  groan,  or  a 
sudden  cry  of  "O  God!  .  .  .  O  Christ!"  It  was  I, 
generally,  who  spoke  those  words,  and  Palmer  would  say: 
"Yes  .  .  .  and  it's  going  to  last  a  long  time  yet.  A  long 
time.  .  .  .  It's  a  question  who  will  hold  out  twenty-four 
hours  longer  than  the  other  side.  France  is  tired,  more 
tired  than  any  of  us.     Will  she  break  first?     Somehow 


3IO  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

I  think  not.  They  are  wonderful!  Their  women  have  a 
gallant  spirit.  .  .  .  How  good  it  is,  the  smell  of  the  trees 
to-night!" 

Sometimes  we  would  cross  the  river  and  look  back  at 
the  cathedral,  high  and  beautiful  above  the  huddle  of 
old,  old  houses  on  the  quayside,  with  a  faint  light  on  its 
pinnacle  and  buttresses  and  immense  blackness  beyond 
them. 

"Those  builders  of  France  loved  their  work,"  said 
Palmer.  ''There  was  always  war  about  the  walls  of  this 
cathedral,  but  they  went  on  with  it,  stone  by  stone,  with- 
out hurry." 

We  stood  there  in  a  long  silence,  not  on  one  night  only, 
but  many  times,  and  out  of  those  little  dark  streets  below 
the  cathedral  of  Amiens  came  the  spirit  of  history  to 
teach  our  spirit  with  wonderment  at  the  nobility  and  the 
brutality  of  men,  and  their  incurable  folly,  and  their 
patience  with  tyranny. 

**When  is  it  all  going  to  end.  Palmer,  old  man?" 

"The  war,  or  the  folly  of  men.f'" 

"The  war.     This  cursed  war.     This  bloody  war." 

"Something  will  break  one  day,  on  our  side  or  the 
other.  Those  who  hold  out  longest  and  have  the  best 
reserves  of  man-power." 

We  were  starting  early  next  day — before  dawn — to  see 
the  beginning  of  another  battle.  We  walked  slowly  over 
the  little  iron  bridge  again,  through  the  vegetable  market, 
where  old  men  and  women  were  unloading  cabbages  from 
a  big  wagon,  then  into  the  dark  tunnel  of  the  rue  des 
Augustins,  and  so  to  the  little  old  mansion  of  Mme.  de 
la  Rochefoucauld  in  the  rue  Amiral  Courbet.  There  was 
a  light  burning  in  the  window  of  the  censor's  room.  In 
there  the  colonel  was  reading  The  Times  in  the  Louis 
Quinze  salon,  with  a  grave  pucker  on  his  high,  thin  fore- 
head. He  could  not  get  any  grasp  of  the  world's  events. 
There  was  an  attack  on  the  censor  by  NorthclifFe.  Now 
what  did  he  mean  by  that?  It  was  really  very  unkind 
of  him,  after  so  much  civility  to  him.     Charteris  would 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  3ii 

be  furious.  He  would  bang  the  telephone — but — dear, 
dear,  why  should  people  be  so  violent?  War  correspon- 
dents were  violent  on  the  sHghtest  provocation.  The 
world  itself  was  very  violent.  And  it  was  all  so  danger- 
ous.    Don't  you  think  so,  Russell? 

The  cars  were  ordered  for  five  o'clock.     Time  for  bed. 


XI 

The  night  in  Amiens  was  dark  and  sinister  when  rain 
fell  heavily  out  of  a  moonless  sky.  Hardly  a  torch-lamp 
flashed  out  except  where  a  solitary  woman  scurried  down 
the  wet  streets  to  lonely  rooms.  There  were  no  British 
officers  strolling  about.  They  had  turned  in  early,  to 
hot  baths  and  unaccustomed  beds,  except  for  one  or  two, 
with  their  burberries  buttoned  tight  at  the  throat,  and 
sopping  field-caps  pulled  down  about  the  ears,  and  top- 
boots  which  went  splash,  splash  through  deep  puddles 
as  they  staggered  a  Httle  uncertainly  and  peered  up  at 
dark  corners  to  find  their  whereabouts,  by  a  dim  sense  of 
locaHty  and  the  shapes  of  the  houses.  The  rain  pattered 
sharply  on  the  pavements  and  beat  a  tattoo  on  leaden 
gutters  and  slate  roofs.  Every  window  was  shuttered 
and  no  Hght  gleamed  through. 

On  such  a  night  I  went  out  with  Beach  Thomas,  as 
often  before,  wet  or  fine,  after  hard  writing. 

"A  foul  night,"  said  Thomas,  setting  off  in  his  quick, 
jerky  step.     "I  like  to  feel  the  rain  on  my  face." 

We  turned  down  as  usual  to  the  river.  It  was  very 
dark — the  rain  was  heavy  on  the  quayside,  where  there 
was  a  group  of  people  bareheaded  in  the  rain  and  chatter- 
ing in  French,  with  gusts  of  laughter. 

" Une  houteille  de  champagne!^*  The  words  were 
spoken  in  a  clear  boy's  voice,  with  an  elaborate  carica- 
ture of  French  accent,  in  musical  cadence,  but  unmistak- 
ably English. 

"A  drunken  officer,"  said  Thomas. 

*Toor  devil!" 


312  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

We  drew  near  among  the  people  and  saw  a  young  officer 
arm  in  arm  with  a  French  peasant — one  of  the  market 
porters — teUing  a  tale  in  broken  French  to  the  audience 
about  him,  with  comic  gesticulations  and  extraordinary 
volubility. 

A  woman  put  her  hand  on  my  shoulder  and  spoke  in 
French. 

"He  has  drunk  too  much  bad  wine.  His  legs  walk 
away  from  him.  He  will  be  in  trouble,  Monsieur.  And 
a  child — no  older  than  my  own  boy  who  is  fighting  in  the 
Argonne." 

"Apportez-moi  une  bouteille  de  champagne,  vite!  .  .  ." 
said  the  young  officer.  Then  he  waved  his  arm  and  said: 
*'J'ai  perdu  mon  cheval"  ("A  kingdom  for  a  bloody 
horse!"),  "as  Shakespeare  said.  Y  a-t'il  quelquun  qui  a 
vu  mon  sacre  cheval?  In  other  words,  if  I  don't  find  that 
four-legged  beast  which  led  to  my  damnation  I  shall  be 
shot  at  dawn.  Fusille,  comprenez?  On  va  me  fusilier  par 
un  mur  blanc — or  is  it  une  mure  blanche?  quand  I'aurore 
se  leve  avec  les  couleurs  d'une  rose  et  I'odeur  d'une  jeune 
fille  lavee  et  parfumee.  Pretty  good  that,  eh,  what.'* 
But  the  fact  remains  that  unless  I  find  my  steed,  my 
charger,  my  war-horse,  which  in  reality  does  not  belong 
to  me  at  all,  because  I  pinched  it  from  the  colonel,  I 
shall  be  shot  as  sure  as  fate,  and,  alas!  I  do  not  want  to 
die.  I  am  too  young  to  die,  and  meanwhile  I  desire 
encore  une  bouteille  de  champagne!" 

The  little  crowd  of  citizens  found  a  grim  humor  in  this 
speech,  one-third  of  which  they  understood.  They 
laughed  coarsely,  and  a  man  said: 

"O'uel  drole  de  type!     Quel  numero!" 

But  the  woman  who  had  touched  me  on  the  sleeve 
spoke  to  me  again. 

"He  says  he  has  lost  his  horse  and  will  be  shot  as  a 
deserter.  Those  things  happen.  My  boy  in  the  Argonne 
tells  me  that  a  comrade  of  his  was  shot  for  hiding  five 
days  with  his  young  woman.  It  would  be  sad  if  this 
poor  child  should  be  condemned  to  death." 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  313 

I  pushed  my  way  through  the  crowd  and  went  up  to 
the  officer. 

"Can  I  help  at  all?" 

He  greeted  me  warmdy,  as  though  he  had  known  me 
for  years. 

"My  dear  old  pal,  you  can  indeed!  First  of  all  I  want 
a  bottle  of  champagne — une  bouteille  de  champagne — " 
it  was  wonderful  how  much  music  he  put  into  those  words 
— "and  after  that  I  want  my  runaway  horse,  as  I  have 
explained  to  these  good  people  who  do  not  understand  a 
bloody  word,  in  spite  of  my  excellent  French  accent.  I 
stole  the  colonel's  horse  to  come  for  a  joy-ride  to  Amiens. 
The  colonel  is  one  of  the  best  of  men,  but  very  touchy, 
very  touchy  indeed.  You  would  be  surprised.  He  also 
has  the  worst  horse  in  the  world,  or  did,  until  it  ran  away 
half  an  hour  ago  into  the  blackness  of  this  hell  which  men 
call  Amiens.  It  is  quite  certain  that  if  I  go  back  without 
that  horse  most  unpleasant  things  will  happen  to  a  gallant 
young  British  officer,  meaning  myself,  who  with  most 
innocent  intentions  of  cleansing  his  soul  from  the  filth  of 
battle,  from  the  horror  of  battle,  from  the  disgusting  fear 
of  battle — oh  yes,  I've  been  afraid  all  right,  and  so  have 
you  unless  you're  a  damned  hero  or  a  damned  liar — de- 
sired to  get  as  far  as  this  beautiful  city  (so  fair  without, 
so  foul  within!)  in  order  to  drink  a  bottle,  or  even  two 
or  three,  of  rich,  sparkling  wine,  to  see  the  loveliness  of 
women  as  they  trip  about  these  pestilential  streets,  to 
say  a  little  prayer  in  la  cathedrale,  and  then  to  ride  back, 
refreshed,  virtuous,  knightly,  all  through  the  quiet  night, 
to  deliver  up  the  horse  whence  I  had  pinched  it,  and 
nobody  any  the  wiser  in  the  dewy  morn.  You  see,  it 
was  a  good  scheme." 

"What  happened?"  I  asked. 

"It  happened  thuswise,"  he  answered,  breaking  out 
into  fresh  eloquence,  with  fantastic  similes  and  expres- 
sions of  which  I  can  give  only  the  spirit.  "Leaving 
Pozieres,  which,  as  you  doubtless  know,  unless  you  are 
a  bloody  staff-officer,  is  a  place  where  the  devil  goes  about^ 


314  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

like  a  roaring  lion  seeking  whom  he  may  devour,  where 
he  leaves  his  victims'  entrails  hanging  on  to  barbed  wire, 
and  where  the  bodies  of  your  friends  and  mine  lie  decom- 
posing in  muddy  holes — you  know  the  place? — I  put  my 
legs  across  the  colonel's  horse,  which  was  in  the  wagon- 
lines,  and  set  forth  for  Amiens.  That  horse  knew  that 
I  had  pinched  him — forgive  my  slang.  I  should  have 
said  it  in  the  French  language,  vole — and  resented  me. 
Thrice  was  I  nearly  thrown  from  his  back.  Twice  did 
he  entangle  himself  in  barbed  wire  deliberately.  Once 
did  I  have  to  coerce  him  with  many  stripes  to  pass  a  tank. 
Then  the  heavens  opened  upon  us  and  it  rained.  It 
rained  until  I  was  wet  to  the  skin,  in  spite  of  sheltering 
beneath  a  tree,  one  branch  of  which,  owing  to  the  stub- 
born temper  of  my  steed,  struck  me  a  stinging  blow  across 
the  face.  So  in  no  joyful  spirit  I  came  at  last  to  Amiens, 
this  whited  sepulcher,  this  Circe's  capital,  this  den  of 
thieves,  this  home  of  vampires.  There  I  dined,  not 
wisely,  but  too  well.  I  drank  of  the  flowing  cup — une 
bouteille  de  champagne — and  I  met  a  maiden  as  ugly  as 
sin,  but  beautiful  in  my  eyes  after  Pozieres — you  under- 
stand— and  accompanied  her  to  her  poor  lodging — in  a 
most  verminous  place,  sir — where  we  discoursed  upon  the 
problems  of  life  and  love.  O  youth!  O  war!  O 
hell!  .  .  .  My  horse,  that  brute  who  resented  me,  was  in 
charge  of  an  'ostler,  whom  I  believe  verily  is  a  limb  of 
Satan,  in  the  yard  without.  It  was  late  when  I  left  that 
lair  of  Circe,  where  young  British  officers,  even  as  myself, 
are  turned  into  swine.  It  was  late  and  dark,  and  I  was 
drunk.  Even  now  I  am  very  drunk.  I  may  say  that  I 
am  becoming  drunker  and  drunker." 

It  was  true.  The  fumes  of  bad  champagne  were 
working  in  the  boy's  brain,  and  he  leaned  heavily 
against   me. 

"It  was  then  that  that  happened  which  will  undoubtedly 
lead  to  my  undoing,  and  blast  my  career  as  I  have  blasted 
my  soul.  The  horse  was  there  in  the  yard,  but  without 
saddle  or  bridle. 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  315 

"* Where  is  my  saddle  and  where  is  my  bridle,  oh, 
naughty  'ostler?'  I  shouted,  in  dismay. 

"The  'ostler,  who,  as  I  informed  you,  is  one  of  Satan's 
imps,  answered  in  incomprehensible  French,  led  the  horse 
forth  from  the  yard,  and,  giving  it  a  mighty  blow  on  the 
rump,  sent  it  clattering  forth  into  the  outer  darkness.  In 
my  fear  of  losing  it — for  I  must  be  at  Pozieres  at  dawn — 
1  ran  after  it,  but  it  ran  too  fast  in  the  darkness,  and  I 
stopped  and  tried  to  grope  my  way  back  to  the  stable- 
yard  to  kill  that  'ostler,  thereby  serving  God,  and  other 
British  officers,  for  he  was  the  devil's  agent.  But  I  could 
not  find  the  yard  again.  It  had  disappeared!  It  was 
swallowed  up  in  Cimmerian  gloom.  So  I  was  without 
revenge  and  without  horse,  and,  as  you  will  perceive, 
sir — unless  you  are  a  bloody  staff-officer  who  doesn't 
perceive  anything — I  am  utterly  undone.  I  am  also 
horribly  drunk,  and  I  must  apologize  for  leaning  so 
heavily  on  your  arm.  It's  awfully  good  of  you,  any- 
way, old  man." 

The  crowd  was  mostly  moving,  driven  indoors  by  the 
rain.  The  woman  who  had  spoken  to  me  said,  "I  heard 
a  horse's  hoofs  upon  the  bridge,  la-bas." 

Then  she  went  away  with  her  apron  over  her  head. 

Thomas  and  I  walked  each  side  of  the  officer,  giving  him 
an  arm.  He  could  not  walk  straight,  and  his  legs  played 
freakish  tricks  with  him.  All  the  while  he  talked  in  a 
strain  of  high  comedy  interlarded  with  grim  little  phrases, 
revealing  an  underlying  sense  of  tragedy  and  despair, 
until  his  speech  thickened  and  he  became  less  fluent. 
We  spent  a  fantastic  hour  searching  for  his  horse.  It 
was  hke  a  nightmare  in  the  darkness  and  rain.  Every 
now  and  then  we  heard,  distinctly,  the  klip-klop  of  a 
horse's  hoofs,  and  went  off  in  that  direction,  only  to  be 
baffled  by  dead  silence,  with  no  sign  of  the  animal.  Then 
again,  as  we  stood  listening,  we  heard  the  beat  of  hoofs 
on  hard  pavements,  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  walked 
that  way,  dragging  the  boy,  who  was  getting  more  and 
more  incapable  of  walking  upright.     At  last  we  gave  up 


3i6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

hope  of  finding  the  horse,  though  the  young  officer  kept 
assuring  us  that  he  must  find  it  at  all  costs.  "It's  a  point 
of  honor,"  he  said,  thickly.  "Not  my  horse,  you  know 
Doctor's  horse.     Devil  to  pay  to-morrow." 

He  laughed  foolishly  and  said: 

"Always  devil  to  pay  in  morning." 

We  were  soaked  to  the  skin. 

"Come  home  with  me,"  I  said.  "We  can  give  you  a 
shake-down." 

"Frightfully  good,  old  man.  Awfully  sorry,  you  know, 
and  all  that.  Are  you  a  blooming  general,  or  something? 
But  I  must  find  horse." 

By  some  means  we  succeeded  in  persuading  him  that 
the  chase  was  useless  and  that  it  would  be  better  for  him 
to  get  into  our  billet  and  start  out  next  morning,  early. 
We  dragged  him  up  the  rue  des  Augustins,  to  the  rue 
Amiral  Courbet.  Outside  the  iron  gates  I  spoke  to  him 
warningly: 

"You've  got  to  be  quiet.  There  are  staff-officers  in- 
side  " 

"What.? . .  .  Staff-officers? . .  .  Oh,  my  God!" 

The  boy  was  dismayed.  The  thought  of  facing  staff- 
officers  almost  sobered  him;  did,  indeed,  sober  his  brain 
for  a  moment,  though  not  his  legs. 

"It's  all  right,"  I  said.  "Go  quietly,  and  I  will  get  you 
upstairs  safely." 

It  was  astonishing  how  quietly  he  went,  hanging  on  to 
me.  The  little  colonel  was  reading  The  Tiines  in  the 
salon.  We  passed  the  open  door,  and  saw  over  the  paper 
his  high  forehead  puckered  with  perplexity  as  to  the  v/2iys 
of  the  world.  But  he  did  not  raise  his  head  or  drop  Th<; 
Times  at  the  sound  of  our  entry.  I  took  the  boy  upstairs 
to  my  room  and  guided  him  inside.  He  said,  "Thanks 
awfully,"  and  then  lay  down  on  the  floor  and  fell  into  so 
deep  a  sleep  that  I  was  scared  and  thought  for  a  moment 
he  might  be  dead.  I  went  downstairs  to  chat  with  the 
little  colonel  and  form  an  alibi  in  case  of  trouble.  An 
hour  later,  when  I  went  into  my  room,  I  found  the  boy 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  317 

still  lying  as  I  had  left  him,  without  having  stirred  a  limb. 
He  was  a  handsome  fellow,  with  his  head  hanging  limply 
across  his  right  arm  and  a  lock  of  damp  hair  falling  across 
his  forehead.  I  thought  of  a  son  of  mine,  who  in  a  few 
years  would  be  as  old  as  he,  and  I  prayed  God  mine  might 
be  spared  this  boy's  tragedy.  .  .  .  Through  the  night  he 
slept  in  a  drugged  way,  but  just  at  dawn  he  woke  up  and 
stretched  himself,  with  a  queer  little  moan.  Then  he 
sat  up  and  said: 

"Where  am  I?" 

"In  a  billet  at  Amiens.  You  lost  your  horse  last  night 
and  I  brought  you  here." 

Remembrance  came  into  his  eyes  and  his  face  was 
swept  w'ith  a  sudden  flush  of  shame  and  agony. 

"Yes  ...  I  made  a  fool  of  myself.  The  worst  possible. 
How  can  I  get  back  to  Pozieres?" 

"You  could  jump  a  lorry  with  luck." 

"I  must.  It's  serious  if  I  don't  get  back  in  time.  In 
any  case,  the  loss  of  that  horse—" 

He  thought  deeply  for  a  moment,  and  I  could  see  that 
his  head  was  aching  to  the  beat  of  sledge-hammers. 

"Can  I  wash  anywhere?" 

I  pointed  to  a  jug  and  basin,  and  he  said,  "Thanks, 
enormously." 

He  washed  hurriedly,  and  then  stared  down  with  a 
shamed  look  at  his  muddy  uniform,  all  creased  and  be- 
draggled. After  that  he  asked  if  he  could  get  out  down- 
stairs, and  I  told  him  the  door  was  unlocked. 

He  hesitated  for  a  moment  before  leaving  my  room. 

"I  am  sorry  to  have  given  you  all  this  trouble.  It  was 
very  decent  of  you.     Many  thanks," 

The  boy  was  a  gentleman  when  sober.  I  wonder  if 
he  died  at  Pozieres,  or  farther  on  by  the  Butte  de  Warlen- 
court.  ...  A  week  later  I  saw  an  advertisement  in  an 
Amiens  paper:  "Horse  found.  Brown,  with  white  sock 
on  right  foreleg.     Apply — " 

I  have  a  fancy  it  was  the  horse  for  which  we  had 
^e^rched  in  the  rain, 


3i8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

XII 

The  quickest  way  to  the  cathedral  is  down  a  turning 
on  the  right-hand  side  of  the  Street  of  the  Three  Pebbles. 
CharHe's  bar  was  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the  street, 
always  crowded  after  six  o'clock  by  officers  of  every 
regiment,  drinking  egg-nogs,  Martinis,  Bronxes,  sherry 
cobblers,  and  other  liquids,  which  helped  men  marvelously 
to  forget  the  beastliness  of  war,  and  gave  them  the  gift 
of  laughter,  and  made  them  careless  of  the  battles  which 
would  have  to  be  fought.  Young  stafF-officers  were  there, 
explaining  carefully  how  hard  worked  they  were  and  how 
often  they  went  under  shell-lire.  The  fighting  officers, 
English,  Scottish,  Irish,  Welsh,  jeered  at  them,  laughed 
hugely  at  the  latest  story  of  mirthful  horror,  arranged 
rendezvous  at  the  Godebert  restaurant,  where  they  would 
see  the  beautiful  Marguerite  (until  she  transferred  to 
la  cathedrale  in  the  same  street)  and  our  checks  which 
Charlie  cashed  at  a  discount,  with  a  noble  faith  in  British 
honesty,  not  often,  as  he  told  me,  being  hurt  by  a  "stu- 
mor." Charlie's  bar  was  wrecked  by  shell-fire  afterward, 
and  he  went  to  Abbeville  and  set  up  a  more  important 
establishment,  which  was  wrecked,  too,  in  a  fierce  air  raid, 
before  the  paint  was  dry  on  the  walls. 

The  cathedral  was  a  shrine  to  which  many  men  and 
women  went  all  through  the  war,  called  into  its  white 
halls  by  the  spirit  of  beauty  which  dwelt  there,  and  by 
its  silence  and  peace.  The  great  west  door  was  screened 
from  bomb-splinters  by  sand-bags  piled  high,  and  inside 
there  were  other  walls  of  sand-bags  closing  in  the  sanctu- 
ary and  some  of  the  windows.  But  these  signs  of  war 
did  not  spoil  the  majesty  of  the  tall  columns  and  high 
roof,  nor  the  loveliness  of  the  sculptured  flowers  below  the 
clerestory  arches,  nor  the  spiritual  mystery  of  those  great, 
dim  aisles,  where  light  flickered  and  shadows  lurked,  and 
the  ghosts  of  history  came  out  of  their  tombs  to  pace 
these  stones  again  where  five,  six,  seven  centuries  before 
they  had  walked  to  worship  God,  in  joy  or  in  despair,  oi 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  319 

to  show  their  beauty  of  young  womanhood — peasant  girl 
or  princess — to  lovers  gazing  by  the  pillars,  or  to  plight 
their  troth  as  royal  brides,  or  get  a  crown  for  their  heads, 
or  mercy  for  their  dead  bodies  in  velvet-draped  coffins. 

Our  soldiers  went  in  there,  as  many  centuries  before 
other  English  soldiers,  who  came  out  with  Edward  the 
Black  Prince,  by  way  of  Crecy,  or  with  Harry  the  King, 
through  Agincourt.  Five  hundred  years  hence,  if  Amiens 
cathedral  still  stands,  undamaged  by  some  new  and  mon- 
strous conflict  in  a  world  of  incurable  folly,  the  generation 
of  that  time  will  think  now  and  then,  perhaps,  of  the 
English  lads  in  khaki  who  tramped  up  the  highway  of 
this  nave  with  their  field-caps  under  their  arms,  each 
footstep  leaving  the  imprint  of  a  wet  boot  on  the  old 
flagstones,  awed  by  the  silence  and  the  spaciousness,  with 
a  sudden  heartache  for  a  closer  knowledge,  or  some  knowl- 
edge, of  the  God  worshiped  there — the  God  of  Love — 
while,  not  far  away,  men  were  killing  one  another  by  high 
explosives,  shells,  hand-grenades,  mines,  machine-guns, 
bayonets,  poison-gas,  trench-mortars,  tanks,  and,  in  close 
fighting,  with  short  daggers  hke  butchers'  knives,  or  clubs 
with  steel  knobs.  I  watched  the  faces  of  the  men  who 
entered  here.  Some  of  them,  like  the  Australians  and 
New-Zealanders,  unfamiHar  with  cathedrals,  and  not  re- 
ligious by  instinct  or  training,  wandered  round  in  a  won- 
dering way,  with  a  touch  of  scorn,  even  of  hostility,  now 
and  then,  for  these  mysteries — the  chanting  of  the  Office, 
the  tinkling  of  the  bells  at  the  high  mass — which  were 
beyond  their  understanding,  and  which  they  could  not 
link  up  with  any  logic  of  life,  as  they  knew  it  now,  away 
up  by  Bapaume  or  Bullecourt,  where  God  had  nothing 
to  do,  seemingly,  with  a  night  raid  into  Boche  Hues,  when 
they  blew  a  party  of  Germans  to  bits  by  dropping  Stoke 
bombs  down  their  dugout,  or  with  the  shrieks  of  German 
boys,  mad  with  fear,  when  the  AustraHans  jumped  on 
them  in  the  darkness  and  made  haste  with  their  kilHng. 
All  the  same,  this  great  church  was  wonderful,  and  the 
AustraHans,  scrunching  their  slouch-hats,  stared  up  at 


320  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  tall  columns  to  the  clerestory  arches,  and  peered 
through  the  screen  to  the  golden  sun  upon  the  high-altar, 
and  touched  old  tombs  with  their  muddy  hands,  reading 
the  dates  on  them — 1250,  1155,  1415 — with  astonishment 
at  their  antiquity.  Their  clean-cut  hatchet  faces,  sun- 
baked, tanned  by  rain  and  wind,  their  simple  blue-gray 
eyes,  the  fine,  strong  grace  of  their  bodies,  as  they  stood 
at  ease  in  this  place  of  history,  struck  me  as  being  wonder- 
fully like  all  that  one  imagines  of  those  English  knights 
and  squires — Norman-English — who  rode  through  France 
with  the  Black  Prince.  It  is  as  though  Australia  had 
bred  back  to  the  old  strain.  Our  own  English  soldiers 
were  less  arresting  to  the  eye,  more  dapper  and  neat,  not 
such  evident  children  of  nature.  Gravely  they  walked 
up  the  aisles,  standing  in  groups  where  a  service  was  in 
progress,  watching  the  movements  of  the  priests,  listening 
to  the  choir  and  organ  with  reverent,  dreamy  eyes.  Some 
of  them — country  lads — thought  back,  I  fancy,  to  some 
village  church  in  England  where  they  had  sung  hymns 
with  mother  and  sisters  in  the  days  before  the  war.  Eng- 
land and  that  little  church  were  a  long  way  off  now,  per- 
haps all  eternity  away.  I  saw  one  boy  standing  quite 
motionless,  with  wet  eyes,  without  self-consciousness. 
This  music,  this  place  of  thoughtfulness,  had  made  some- 
thing break  in  his  heart.  .  .  .  Some  of  our  young  officers, 
but  not  many,  knelt  on  the  cane  chairs  and  prayed,  face 
in  hands.  French  officers  crossed  themselves  and  their 
medals  tinkled  as  they  walked  up  the  aisles.  Always 
there  were  women  in  black  weeds  kneeling  before  the  side- 
altars,  praying  to  the  Virgin  for  husbands  and  sons,  dead 
or  alive,  fighting  candles  below  holy  pictures  and  statues. 
Our  men  tiptoed  past  them,  holding  steel  hats  or  field- 
caps,  and  putting  their  packs  against  the  pillars.  On  the 
steps  of  the  cathedral  I  heard  two  officers  talking  one  day. 
**How  can  one  reconcile  all  this  with  the  war?" 
"Why  not?  ...  I  suppose  we're  fighting  for  justice  and 
all  that.     That's  what  The  Daily  Mail  tells  us." 

"Seriously,  old  man.     Where  does  Christ  come  in?" 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  321 

"He  wasn't  against  righteous  force.  He  chased  the 
money-changers  out  of  the  Temple." 

"Yes,  but  His  whole  teaching  was  love  and  forgiveness. 
'Thou  shalt  not  kill.'  'Little  children,  love  one  an- 
other!' 'Turn  the  other  cheek.' ...  Is  it  all  sheer  tosh? 
If  so,  why  go  on  pretending?  .  .  .  Take  chaplains  in  khaki 
— these  lieutenant-colonels  with  black  crosses.  They 
make  me  sick.  It's  either  one  thing  or  the  other.  Brute 
force  or  Christianity.  I  am  harking  back  to  the  brute- 
force  theory.  But  I'm  not  going  to  say  'God  is  love' 
one  day  and  then  prod  a  man  in  the  stomach  the  next. 
Let's  be  consistent." 

"The  other  fellows  asked  for  it.  They  attacked 
first." 

"Yes,  but  we  are  all  involved.  Our  diplomacy,  our 
secret  treaties,  our  philosophical  dope  over  the  masses, 
our  imperial  egotism,  our  trade  rivalries — all  that  was  a 
direct  challenge  of  Might  against  Right.  The  Germans 
are  more  efficient  and  more  logical — that's  all.  They 
prepared  for  the  inevitable  and  struck  first.  We  knew 
the  inevitable  was  coming,  but  didn't  prepare,  being  too 
damned  inefficient.  ...  I  have  a  leaning  toward  reUgion. 
Instinctively  I'm  for  Christ.  But  it  doesn't  work  in  with 
efficiency  and  machine-guns." 

"It  belongs  to  another  department,  that's  all.  We're 
spiritual  and  animal  at  the  same  time.  In  one  part  of 
my  brain  I'm  a  gentleman.  In  another,  a  beast.  It's 
conflict.  We  can't  eliminate  the  beast,  but  we  can  con- 
trol it  now  and  then  when  it  gets  too  obstreperous,  and 
that's  where  religion  helps.  It's  the  high  ideal — other- 
worldliness." 

"The  Germans  pray  to  the  same  God.  Praise  Christ 
and  ask  for  victory." 

"Let  them.  It  may  do  them  a  bit  of  good.  It  seems 
to  me  God  is  above  all  the  squabbles  of  humanity — 
doesn't  care  a  damn  about  them! — but  the  human  soul 
can  get  into  touch  with  the  infinite  and  the  ideal,  even 
while  hq.is  doing  butcher's  vvork,  and  beastliness.     That 


322  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

doesn't  matter  very  much.  It's  part  of  the  routine  of 
life." 

**But  it  does  matter.  It  makes  agony  and  damnation 
in  the  world.  It  creates  cruelty  and  tyranny,  and  all 
bloody  things.  Surely  if  we  believe  in  God — anyhow  in 
Christian  ethics — this  war  is  a  monstrous  crime  in  which 
all  humanity  is  involved." 

"The  Hun  started  it.  .  .  .  Let's  go  and  give  the  glad  eye 
to  Marguerite." 

At  night,  in  moonlight,  Amiens  cathedral  was  touched 
with  a  new  spirituality,  a  white  magic  beyond  all  words 
of  beauty.  On  many  nights  of  war  I  walked  round  the 
cathedral  square,  looking  up  at  that  grand  mass  of 
masonry  with  all  its  pinnacles  and  buttresses  gleaming 
like  silver  and  its  sculptured  tracery  like  lacework,  and 
a  flood  of  milky  light  glamorous  on  walls  in  which  every 
stone  was  clear-cut  beyond  a  vast  shadow-world.  How 
old  it  was!  How  many  human  eyes  through  many  cen- 
turies had  come  in  the  white  Hght  of  the  moon  to  look  at 
this  dream  in  stone  enshrining  the  faith  of  men!  The 
Revolution  had  surged  round  these  walls,  and  the  screams 
of  wild  women,  and  their  shrill  laughter,  and  their  cries 
for  the  blood  of  aristocrats,  had  risen  from  this  square. 
Pageants  of  kingship  and  royal  death  had  passed  across 
these  pavements  through  the  great  doors  there.  Peasant 
WDmen,  in  the  darkness,  had  wept  against  these  walls, 
praying  for  God's  pity  for  their  hearts.  Now  the  English 
officers  were  lighting  cigarettes  in  the  shelter  of  a  wall, 
the  outline  of  their  features — knightly  faces — touched  by 
the  moonlight.  There  were  flashes  of  gun-fire  in  the  sky 
beyond  the  river. 

*'A  good  night  for  a  German  air  raid,"  said  one  of  the 
officers. 

"Yes,  a  lovely  night  for  killing  women  in  their  sleep," 
said  the  other  man. 

The  people  of  Amiens  were  sleeping,  and  no  light 
gleamed  through  their  shutters. 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  323 

XIII 

Coming  away  from  the  cathedral  through  a  side-street 
going  into  the  rue  des  Trois  Cailloux,  I  used  to  pass  the 
Palais  de  Justice — a  big,  grim  building,  with  a  long  flight 
of  steps  leading  up  to  its  doorways,  and  above  the  portico 
the  figure  of  Justice,  blind,  holding  her  scales.  There  was 
no  justice  there  during  the  war,  but  rooms  full  of  French 
soldiers  with  smashed  faces,  bHnd,  many  of  them,  like 
that  woman  in  stone.  They  used  to  sit,  on  fine  days,  on 
the  flight  of  steps,  a  tragic  exhibition  of  war  for  passers-by 
to  see.  Many  of  them  revealed  no  faces,  but  were  white 
masks  of  cotton-wool,  bandaged  round  their  heads.  Others 
showed  only  the  upper  parts  of  their  faces,  and  the  places 
where  their  jaws  had  been  were  tied  up  with  white  rags. 
There  were  men  without  noses,  and  men  with  half  their 
scalps  torn  away.  French  children  used  to  stare  through 
the  raihngs  at  them,  gravely,  with  childish  curiosity,  with- 
out pity.  English  soldiers  gave  them  a  passing  glance, 
and  went  on  to  places  where  they  might  be  made  like  this, 
without  faces,  or  jaws,  or  noses,  or  eyes.  By  their  uni- 
forms I  saw  that  there  were  Chasseurs  Alpins,  and  Chas- 
seurs d'Afrique,  and  young  infantrymen  of  the  line,  and 
gunners.  They  sat,  without  restlessness,  watching  the 
passers-by  if  they  had  eyes  to  see,  or,  if  bhnd,  feeling  the 
breeze  about  them,  and  hstening  to  the  sound  of  passing 
feet. 

XIV 

The  prettiest  view  of  Amiens  was  from  the  banks  of  the 
Somme  outside  the  city,  on  the  east  side,  and  there  was 
a  charming  walk  along  the  tow-path,  past  market-gardens 
going  down  to  the  river  on  the  opposite  bank,  and  past 
the  gardens  of  little  chalets  built  for  love-in-idleness  in 
days  of  peace.  They  were  of  fantastic  architecture — these 
cottages  where  well-to-do  citizens  of  Amiens  used  to  come 
for  week-ends  of  boating  and  fishing — and  their  garden 


324  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

gates  at  the  end  of  wooden  bridges  over  back-waters  were 
of  iron  twisted  into  the  shapes  of  swans  or  flowers,  and 
there  were  snails  of  terra-cotta  on  the  chimney-pots,  and 
painted  woodwork  on  the  walls,  in  the  worst  taste,  yet 
amusing  and  pleasing  to  the  eye  in  their  green  bowers. 
I  remember  one  called  Mon  Idee,  and  wondered  that  any 
man  should  be  proud  of  such  a  freakish  conception  of  a 
country  house.  They  were  abandoned  during  the  war, 
except  one  or  two  used  for  casual  rendezvous  between 
French  officers  and  their  light  o'  loves,  and  the  tow-path 
was  used  only  by  stray  couples  who  came  out  for  loneli- 
ness, and  British  soldiers  walking  out  with  French  girls. 
The  market-gardeners  punted  down  the  river  in  long, 
shallow  boats,  like  gondolas,  laden  high  with  cabbages, 
cauliflowers,  and  asparagus,  and  farther  up-stream  there 
was  a  boat-house  where  orderlies  from  the  New  Zealand 
hospital  in  Amiens  used  to  get  skiffs  for  an  hour's  rowing, 
leaning  on  their  oars  to  look  at  the  picture  of  the  cathe- 
dral rising  like  a  mirage  beyond  the  willows  and  the  en- 
circling water,  with  fleecy  clouds  above  its  glittering  roof, 
or  lurid  storm-clouds  with  the  red  glow  of  sunset  beneath 
their  wings.  In  the  dusk  or  the  darkness  there  was 
silence  along  the  banks  but  for  a  ceaseless  throbbing  of 
distant  gun-fire,  rising  sometimes  to  a  fury  of  drumming 
when  the  French  soixantc-quinze  was  at  work,  outside 
Roye  and  the  lines  beyond  Suzanne.  It  was  what  the 
French  call  la  rafale  des  tambours  de  la  mort — the  ruflfle  of 
the  drums  of  death.  The  winding  waters  of  the  Somme 
flowed  in  higher  reaches  through  the  hell  of  war  by 
Biaches  and  St. -Christ,  this  side  of  Peronne,  where  dead 
bodies  floated  in  slime  and  blood,  and  there  was  a  litter 
of  broken  bridges  and  barges,  and  dead  trees,  and  am- 
munition-boxes. The  river  itself  was  a  highway  into  hell, 
and  there  came  back  upon  its  tide  in  slow-moving  barges 
the  wreckage  of  human  life,  fresh  from  the  torturers. 
These  barges  used  to  unload  their  cargoes  of  maimed 
men  at  a  carpenter's  yard  just  below  the  bridge,  outside 
the  city,  and  often  as  I  passed  I  saw  human  bodies  being 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  325 

lifted  out  and  carried  on  stretchers  into  the  wooden  sheds. 
They  were  the  bad  cases— French  boys  wounded  in  the 
abdomen  or  lungs,  or  with  their  limbs  torn  off,  or  hope- 
lessly shattered.  It  was  an  agony  for  them  to  be  moved, 
even  on  the  stretchers.  Some  of  them  cried  out  in  fearful 
anguish,  or  moaned  like  wounded  animals,  again  and  again. 
Those  sounds  spoiled  the  music  of  the  lapping  water  and 
the  whispering  of  the  willows  and  the  song  of  birds.  The 
sight  of  these  tortured  boys,  made  useless  in  life,  took  the 
color  out  of  the  flowers  and  the  beauty  out  of  that  vision 
of  the  great  cathedral,  splendid  above  the  river.  Women 
watched  them  from  the  bridge,  straining  their  eyes  as 
the  bodies  were  carried  to  the  bank.  I  think  some  of 
them  looked  for  their  own  men.  One  of  them  spoke  to 
me  one  day. 

"That  is  what  the  Germans  do  to  our  sons.  Bandits! 
Assassins!" 

"Yes.     That  is  war,  Madame." 

She  put  a  skinny  hand  on  my  arm. 

"Will  it  go  on  forever,  this  war.f*  Until  all  the  men  are 
killed?" 

"Not  so  long  as  that,  Madame.  Some  men  will  be  left 
alive.  The  very  old  and  the  very  young,  and  the  lucky 
ones,  and  those  behind  the  lines." 

"The  Germans  are  losing  many  men,  Monsieur?" 

"Heaps,  Madame.  I  have  seen  their  bodies  strewn 
about  the  fields." 

"Ah,  that  is  good!  I  hope  all  German  women  will  lose 
their  sons,  as  I  have  lost  mine." 

"Where  was  that,  Madame?" 

"Over  there." 

She  pointed  up  the  Somme. 

"He  was  a  good  son.  A  fine  boy.  It  seems  only  yes- 
terday he  lay  at  my  breast.  My  man  weeps  for  him. 
They  were  good  comrades." 

"It  is  sad,  Madame." 

"Ah,  but  yes.     It  is  sad!     Au  revoir.  Monsieur." 

"Au  revoir,  Madame." 

22 


326  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

XV 

There  was  a  big  hospital  in  Amiens,  close  to  the  railway 
station,  organized  by  New  Zealand  doctors  and  nurses. 
I  went  there  one  day  in  the  autumn  of  1914,  when  the 
army  of  von  Kluck  had  passed  through  the  city  and  gone 
beyond.  The  German  doctors  had  left  behind  the  instru- 
ments abandoned  by  an  English  unit  sharing  the  retreat. 
The  French  doctor  who  took  me  round  told  me  the  enemy 
had  behaved  well  in  Amiens.  At  least  he  had  refrained 
from  atrocities.  As  I  went  through  the  long  wards  I  did 
not  guess  that  one  day  I  should  be  a  patient  there.  That 
was  two  years  later,  at  the  end  of  the  Somme  battles.  I 
was  worn  out  and  bloodless  after  five  months  of  hard 
strain  and  nervous  wear  and  tear.  Some  bug  had  bitten 
me  up  in  the  fields  where  lay  the  unburied  dead. 

"Trench  fever,"  said  the  doctor. 

*'You  look  in  need  of  a  rest,"  said  the  matron.  "My 
word,  how  white  you  are!  Had  a  hard  time,  eh,  like  the 
rest  of  them?" 

I  lay  in  bed  at  the  end  of  the  ofiicers'  ward,  with  only 
one  other  bed  between  me  and  the  wall.  That  was  occu- 
pied by  the  gunner-general  of  the  New  Zealand  Division. 
Opposite  was  another  row  of  beds  in  which  officers  lay 
sleeping,  or  reading,  or  lying  still  with  wistful  eyes. 

"That's  all  right.  You're  going  to  die!"  said  a  rosy- 
cheeked  young  orderly,  after  taking  my  temperature  and 
feeUng  my  pulse.  It  was  his  way  of  cheering  a  patient 
up.  He  told  me  how  he  had  been  torpedoed  in  the  Dar- 
danelles while  he  was  ill  with  dysentery.  He  indulged 
in  reminiscences  with  the  New  Zealand  general  who  had 
a  grim  gift  of  silence,  but  glinting  eyes.  In  the  bed  on 
my  left  was  a  handsome  boy  with  a  fine,  delicate  face,  a 
subaltern  in  the  Coldstream  Guards,  with  a  pile  of  books 
at  his  elbow — all  by  Anatole  France.  It  was  the  first 
time  I  had  ever  laid  in  hospital,  and  I  felt  amazingly  weak 
and  helpless,  but  interested  in  my  surroundings.  The 
day  nurse,   a  tall,  buxom  New  Zealand  girl  whom  the 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  327 

general  chaffed  with  sarcastic  humor,  and  who  gave  back 
more  than  she  got,  went  off  duty  with  a  cheery,  "Good 
night,  all!"  and  the  night  nurse  took  her  place,  and  made 
a  first  visit  to  each  bed.  She  was  a  dainty  little  woman 
with  the  complexion  of  a  delicate  rose  and  large,  luminous 
eyes.  She  had  a  nunhke  look,  utterly  pure,  but  with  a 
spiritual  fire  in  those  shining  eyes  of  hers  for  all  these 
men,  who  were  like  children  in  her  hands.  They  seemed 
glad  at  her  coming. 

"Good  evening,  sister!"  said  one  man  after  another, 
even  one  who  had  laid  with  his  eyes  closed  for  an  hour  or 
more,  with  a  look  of  death  on  his  face. 

She  knelt  down  beside  each  one,  saying,  "How  are  you 
to-night?"  and  chatting  in  a  low  voice,  inaudible  to  the 
bed  beyond.  From  one  bed  I  heard  a  boy's  voice  say: 
"Oh,  don't  go  yet,  sister!  You  have  only  given  me  two 
minutes,  and  I  want  ten,  at  least.  I  am  passionately  in 
love  with  you,  you  know,  and  I  have  been  waiting  all  day 
for  your  beauty!" 

There  was  a  gust  of  laughter  in  the  ward. 

"The  child  is  at  it  again!"  said  one  of  the  officers. 

"When  are  you  going  to  write  me  another  sonnet .f"' 
asked  the  nurse.     "The  last  one  was  much  admired." 

"The  last  one  was  rotten,"  said  the  boy.  "I  have 
written  a  real  corker  this  time.  Read  it  to  yourself,  and 
don't  drop  its  pearls  before  these  swine." 

"Well,  you  must  be  good,  or  I  won't  read  it  at  all." 

An  officer  of  the  British  army,  who  was  also  a  poet, 
hurled  the  bedclothes  off  and  sat  on  the  edge  of  his  bed 
in  his  pajamas. 

"I'm  fed  up  with  everything!  I  hate  war!  I  don't 
want  to  be  a  hero!  I  don't  want  to  die!  I  want  to  be 
loved!  ...  I'm  a  glutton  for  love!" 

In  his  pajamas  the  boy  looked  a  child,  no  older  than  a 
schoolboy  who  was  mine  and  who  still  Uked  to  be  tucked 
up  in  bed  by  his  mother.  With  his  tousled  hair  and  his 
petulant  grimace,  this  heutenant  might  have  been  Peter 
Pan,  from  Kensington.     The  night  nurse  pretended  to 


328  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

cliide  him.  It  was  a  very  gentle  chiding,  but  as  abruptly 
as  lie  had  thrown  off  his  clothes  he  snuggled  under  them 
again  and  said:  "All  right,  I'll  be  good.  Only  I  want  a 
kiss  before  I  go  to  sleep." 

I  became  good  friends  with  that  boy,  who  was  a 
promising  young  poet,  and  a  joyous  creature  no  more 
fit  for  war  than  a  child  of  ten,  hating  the  muck  and 
horror  of  it,  not  ashamed  to  confess  his  fear,  with  a 
boyish  wistfulness  of  hope  that  he  might  not  be  killed, 
because  he  loved  life.  But  he  was  killed.  ...  I  had 
a  letter  from  his  stricken  mother  months  afterward. 
The  child  was  *' Missing"  then,  and  her  heart  cried 
out  for  him. 

Opposite  my  bed  was  a  middle-aged  man  from  Lanca- 
shire— I  suppose  he  had  been  in  a  cotton-mill  or  a  factory 
— a  hard-headed,  simple-hearted  fellow,  as  good  as  gold, 
and  always  speaking  of  "the  wife."  But  his  nerves  had 
gone  to  pieces  and  he  was  afraid  to  sleep  because  of  the 
dreams  that  came  to  him. 

"Sister,"  he  said,  "don't  let  me  go  to  sleep.  Wake  me 
up  if  you  see  me  dozing.  I  see  terrible  things  in  my 
dreams.     Frightful  things.     I  can't  bear  it." 

"You  will  sleep  better  to-night,"  she  said.  "I  am 
putting  something  in  your  milk.  Something  to  stop  the 
dreaming." 

But  he  dreamed.  I  lay  awake,  feverish  and  restless, 
and  heard  the  man  opposite  muttering  and  moaning,  in 
his  sleep.  Sometimes  he  would  give  a  long,  quivering 
sigh,  and  sometimes  start  violently,  and  then  wake  up  in 
a  dazed  way,  saying: 

"Oh,  my  God!  Oh,  my  God!"  trembling  with  fear,  so 
that  the  bed  was  shaken.  The  night  nurse  was  always 
by  his  side  in  a  moment  when  he  called  out,  hushing  him 
down,  whispering  to  him. 

"I  see  pools  of  blood  and  bits  of  dead  bodies  in  my 
sleep,"  he  told  me.  "It's  what  I  saw  up  at  Bazentin. 
There  was  a  fellow  with  his  face  blown  off,  walking  about. 
I  see  him  every  night.     Queer,  isn't  it.''     Nerves,  you 


THE   HEART  OF  A  CITY  329 

know.     I  didn't  think  I  had  a  nerve  in  my  body  before 
this  war." 

The  Httle  night  nurse  came  to  my  bedside. 
Can  t  you  sleep  r 

''I'm  afraid  not.  My  heart  is  thumping  in  a  queer 
way.     May  I  smoke?" 

She  put  a  cigarette  between  my  lips  and  Hghted  a 
match. 

**Take  a  few  whifFs  and  then  try  to  sleep.  You  need 
lots  of  sleep." 

In  the  ward  there  was  only  the  glimmer  of  night  lights 
in  red  glasses,  and  now  and  then  all  through  the  night 
matches  were  lighted,  illuminating  the  room  for  a  second, 
followed  by  the  glowing  end  of  a  cigarette  shining  like  a 
star  in  the  darkness. 

The  sleeping  men  breathed  heavily,  tossed  about  vio- 
lently, gave  strange  jerks  and  starts.  Sometimes  they 
spoke  aloud  in  their  sleep. 

"That  isn't  a  dud,  you  fool!     It  will  blow  us  to  hell." 

**Now  then,  get  on  with  it,  can't  you?" 

"Look  out!  They're  coming!  Can't  you  see  them 
moving  by  the  wire?" 

The  spirit  of  war  was  In  that  ward  and  hunted  them 
even  in  their  sleep;  lurking  terrors  surged  up  again  in  their 
subconsciousness.  Sights  which  they  had  tried  to  forget 
stared  at  them  through  their  closed  eyelids.  The  day- 
light came  and  the  night  nurse  sHpped  away,  and  the 
day  nurse  shook  one's  shoulders  and  said:  "Time  to  wash 
and  shave.     No  malingering!" 

It  was  the  discipHne  of  the  hospital.  Men  as  weak  as 
rats  had  to  sit  up  in  bed,  or  crawl  out  of  it,  and  shave 
themselves. 

"You're  merciless!"  I  said,  laughing  painfully  when  the 
day  nurse  dabbed  my  back  with  cold  iodine  at  six  o'clock 
on  a  winter  morning,  with  the  windows  wide  open. 

"Oh,  there's  no  mercy  in  this  place!"  said  the  strong- 
minded  girl.  "It's  kill  or  cure  here,  and  no  time  to 
worry." 


330  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"You're  all  devils,"  said  the  New  Zealand  general. 
"You  don't  care  a  damn  about  the  patients  so  long  as 
you  have  all  the  beds  tidy  by  the  time  the  doctor  comes 
around.  I'm  a  general,  I  am,  and  you  can't  order  me 
about,  and  if  you  think  I'm  going  to  shave  at  this  time 
in  the  morning  you  are  jolly  well  mistaken.  I  am  down 
with  dysentery,  and  don't  you  forget  it.  I  didn't  get 
through  the  Dardanelles  to  be  murdered  at  Amiens." 

"That's  where  you  may  be  mistaken,  general,"  said  the 
imperturbable  girl.  "I  have  to  carry  out  orders,  and  if 
they  lead  to  your  death  it's  not  my  responsibility.  I'm 
paid  a  poor  wage  for  this  job,  but  I  do  my  duty,  rough  or 
smooth,  kill  or  cure." 

"You're  a  vampire.     That's  v/hat  you  are." 
1  m  a  nurse. 

"If  ever  I  hear  you're  going  to  marry  a  New  Zealand 
boy  I'll  warn  him  against  you." 

"He'll  be  too  much  of  a  fool  to  listen  to  you." 

"I've  a  good  mind  to  marry  you  myself  and  beat  you 
every  morning." 

"Modern  wives  have  strong  muscles.    Look  at  my  arm !" 

Three  nights  in  one  week  there  were  air  raids,  and  as 
the  German  mark  was  the  railway  station  we  were  in  the 
center  of  the  danger-zone.  There  was  a  frightful  noise  of 
splintering  glass  and  smashing  timber  between  each  crash 
of  high  explosives.  The  whine  of  shrapnel  from  the  anti- 
aircraft guns  had  a  sinister  note,  abominable  in  the  ears 
of  those  officers  who  had  come  down  from  the  fighting- 
lines  nerve-racked  and  fever-stricken.  They  lay  very 
quiet.  The  night  nurse  moved  about  from  bed  to  bed, 
with  her  flash-lamp.  Her  face  was  pale,  but  she  showed 
no  other  sign  of  fear  and  was  braver  than  her  patients  at 
that  time,  though  they  had  done  the  hero's  job  all  right. 

It  was  in  another  hospital  a  year  later,  when  I  lay  sick 
again,  that  an  officer,  a  very  gallant  gentleman,  said,  "If 
there  is  another  air  raid  I  shall  go  mad."  He  had  been 
stationed  near  the   blast-furnace  of  Les  Izelquins,  near 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  331 

Bethune,  and  had  been  in  many  air  raids,  when  over 
sixty-three  shells  had  blown  his  hut  to  bits  and  killed  his 
men,  until  he  could  bear  it  no  more.  In  the  Amiens  hos- 
pital some  of  the  patients  had  their  heads  under  the  bed- 
clothes like  Httle  children. 


XVI 

The  life  of  Amiens  ended  for  a  while,  and  the  city  was 
deserted  by  all  its  people,  after  the  night  of  March  30, 
191 8,  which  will  be  remembered  forever  to  the  age-long 
history  of  Amiens  as  its  night  of  greatest  tragedy.  For  a 
week  the  enemy  had  been  advancing  across  the  old  battle- 
fields after  the  first  onslaught  in  the  morning  of  March 
2ist,  when  our  fines  were  stormed  and  broken  by  his  men's 
odds  against  our  defending  troops.  We  war  correspond- 
ents had  suffered  mental  agonies  hke  all  who  knew  what 
had  happened  better  than  the  troops  themselves.  Every 
day  after  the  first  break-through  we  pushed  out  in  differ- 
ent directions — Hamilton  Fyfe  and  I  went  together  some- 
times until  we  came  up  with  the  backwash  of  the  great 
retreat,  ebbing  back  and  back,  day  after  day,  with  in- 
creasing speed,  until  it  drew  very  close  to  Amiens.  It 
was  a  kind  of  ordered  chaos,  terrible  to  see.  It  was  a 
chaos  like  that  of  upturned  ant-heaps,  but  with  each  ant 
trying  to  rescue  its  eggs  and  sticks  in  a  persistent,  orderly 
way,  directed  by  some  controlling  or  communal  intelli- 
gence, only  instead  of  eggs  and  sticks  these  soldier-ants 
of  ours,  in  the  whole  world  behind  our  front-lines,  were 
trying  to  rescue  heavy  guns,  motor-lorries,  tanks,  ambu- 
lances, hospital  stores,  ordnance  stores,  steam-rollers, 
agricultural  implements,  transport  wagons,  railway  en- 
gines, Y.  M.  C.  A.  tents,  gun-horse  and  mule  columns, 
while  rear-guard  actions  were  being  fought  within  gun- 
fire of  them  and  walking  wounded  were  hobbling  back 
along  the  roads  in  this  uproar  of  traffic,  and  word  came 
that  a  further  retreat  was  happening  and  that  the  enemy 
had  broken  through  again.  .  . . 


3^2  NOW  IT  CAN  RE  TOLD 

Amiens  seemed  threatened  on  the  morning  when,  to 
the  north,  Albert  was  held  by  a  mixed  crowd  of  Scottish 
and  English  troops,  too  thin,  as  I  could  see  when  I  passed 
through  them,  to  fight  any  big  action,  with  an  enemy 
advancing  rapidly  from  Courcellette  and  outflanking  our 
line  by  Montauban  and  Fricourt.  I  saw  our  men  march- 
ing hastily  in  retreat  to  escape  that  tightening  net,  and 
while  the  southern  side  of  Amiens  was  held  by  a  crowd  of 
stragglers  with  cyclist  battalions,  clerks  from  headquar- 
ters staffs,  and  dismounted  cavalry,  commanded  by 
Brigadier-General  Carey,  sent  down  hurriedly  to  link 
them  together  and  stop  a  widening  gap  until  the  French 
could  get  to  our  relief  on  the  right  and  until  the  Austra- 
lians had  come  down  from  Flanders.  There  was  nothing 
on  that  day  to  prevent  the  Germans  breaking  through 
to  Amiens  except  the  courage  of  exhausted  boys  thinly 
strung  out,  and  the  lagging  footsteps  of  the  Germans 
themselves,  who  had  suffered  heavy  losses  all  the  way 
and  were  spent  for  a  while  by  their  progress  over  the  wild 
ground  of  the  old  fighting-fields.  Their  heavy  guns  were 
far  behind,  unable  to  keep  pace  with  the  storm  troops, 
and  the  enemy  was  relying  entirely  on  machine-guns  and 
a  few  field-guns,  but  most  of  our  guns  were  also  out  of 
action,  captured  or  falling  back  to  new  lines,  and  upon 
the  speed  with  which  the  enemy  could  mass  his  men  for 
a  new  assault  depended  the  safety  of  Amiens  and  the  road 
to  Abbeville  and  the  coast.  If  he  could  hurl  fresh  divi- 
sions of  men  against  our  line  on  that  last  night  of  March, 
or  bring  up  strong  forces  of  cavalry,  or  armored  cars,  our 
line  would  break  and  Amiens  would  be  lost,  and  all  our 
work  would  be  in  jeopardy.  That  was  certain.  It  was 
visible.  It  could  not  be  concealed  by  any  camouflage  of 
hope  or  courage. 

It  was  after  a  day  on  the  Somme  battlefields,  passing 
through  our  retiring  troops,  that  I  sat  down,  with  other 
war  correspondents  and  several  officers,  to  a  dinner  in  the 
old  Hotel  du  Rhin  in  Amiens.  It  was  a  dismal  meal,  in  a 
room  where  there  had  been  much  laughter  and,  through- 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  333 

out  the  battles  of  the  Somme,  in  1916,  a  coming  and  going 
of  generals  and  staffs  and  officers  of  all  grades,  cheery  and 
high-spirited  at  these  little  tables  where  there  were  good 
wine  and  not  bad  food,  and  putting  away  from  their  minds 
for  the  time  being  the  thought  of  tragic  losses  or  forlorn 
battles  in  which  they  might  fall.  In  the  quietude  of  the 
hotel  garden,  a  little  square  plot  of  grass  bordered  by 
flower-beds,  I  had  had  strange  conversations  with  boys 
who  had  revealed  their  souls  a  little,  after  dinner  in  the 
darkness,  their  faces  bared  now  and  then  by  the  light 
of  cigarettes  or  the  flare  of  a  match. 

"Death  is  nothing,"  said  one  young  officer  just  down 
from  the  Somme  fields  for  a  week's  rest-cure  for  jangled 
nerves.  "I  don't  care  a  damn  for  death;  but  it's  the  wait- 
ing for  it,  the  devilishness  of  its  uncertainty,  the  sight  of 
one's  pals  blown  to  bits  about  one,  and  the  animal  fear 
under  shell-fire,  that  break  one's  pluck.  .  .  .  My  nerves 
are  like  fiddle-strings." 

In  that  garden,  other  men,  with  a  queer  laugh  now 
and  then  between  their  stories,  had  told  me  their  experi- 
ences in  shell-craters  and  ditches  under  frightful  fire  which 
had  "wiped  out"  their  platoons  or  companies.  A  be- 
draggled stork,  the  inseparable  companion  of  a  waddling 
gull,  used  to  listen  to  the  conferences,  with  one  leg  tucked 
under  his  wing,  and  its  head  on  one  side,  with  one  watch- 
ful, beady  eye  fixed  on  the  figures  in  khaki — until  sud- 
denly it  would  clap  its  long  bill  rapidly  in  a  wonderful 
imitation  of  machine-gun  fire— "Curse  the  bloody  bird!" 
said  officers  startled  by  this  evil  and  reminiscent  noise — 
and  caper  with  ridiculous  postures  round  the  imperturb- 
able gull.  .  .  .  Beyond  the  lines,  from  the  dining-room, 
would  come  the  babble  of  many  tongues  and  the  laughter 
of  officers  telling  stories  against  one  another  over  their 
bottles  of  wine,  served  by  Gaston  the  head-waiter,  be- 
tween our  discussions  on  strategy — he  was  a  strategist  by 
virtue  of  service  in  the  trenches  and  several  wounds — or 
by  "Von  Tirpitz,"  an  older,  whiskered  man,  or  by  Joseph, 
who  had  a  high,  cackling  laugh  and  strong  views  against 


334  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  fair  sex,  and  the  inevitable  cry,  ''Cest  la  guerrer  when 
officers  complained  of  the  service.  .  .  .  There  had  been 
merry  parties  in  this  room,  crowded  with  the  ghosts  ot 
many  heroic  fellows,  but  it  was  a  gloomy  gathering  on 
that  evening  at  the  end  of  March  when  we  sat  there  for 
the  last  time.  There  were  there  officers  who  had  lost 
their  towns,  and  "Dadoses"  (Deputy  Assistant  Director 
of  Ordnance  Supplies)  whose  stores  had  gone  up  in  smoke 
and  flame,  and  a  few  cavalry  officers  back  from  special 
leave  and  appalled  by  what  had  happened  in  their  ab- 
sence, and  a  group  of  Y.  M.  C.  A.  officials  who  had  escaped 
by  the  skin  of  their  teeth  from  huts  now  far  behind  the 
German  lines,  and  censors  who  knew  that  no  blue  pencil 
could  hide  the  truth  of  the  retreat,  and  war  correspond- 
ents who  had  to  write  the  truth  and  hated  it. 

Gaston  whispered  gloomily  behind  my  chair:  " Alon 
petit  caporal" — he  called  me  that  because  of  a  fancied 
likeness  to  the  young  Napoleon — '^dites  done.  Vous  eroyez 
quits  vont  passer  par  Amiens?  Non,  ce  nest  pas  possible, 
ga!  Pour  la  deuxieme  fois?  Non.  Je  refuse  a  le  croire. 
Mais  c'est  mauvais,  c'est  afreux,  apres  tant  de  sacrificeP^ 

Madame,  of  the  cash-desk,  sat  in  the  dining-room,  for 
company's  sake,  fixing  up  accounts  as  though  the  last 
day  of  reckoning  had  come  ...  as  it  had.  Her  hair,  with 
its  little  curls,  was  still  in  perfect  order.  She  had  two 
dabs  of  color  on  her  cheeks,  as  usual,  but  underneath  a 
waxen  pallor.  She  was  working  out  accounts  with  a 
young  officer,  who  smoked  innumerable  cigarettes  to 
steady  his  nerves.  "Von  Tirpitz"  was  going  round  in  an 
absent-minded  way,  pulling  at  his  long  whiskers. 

The  war  correspondents  talked  together.  We  spoks 
gloomily,  in  low  voices,  so  that  the  waiters  should  not 
hear. 

"If  they  break  through  to  Abbeville  we  shall  lose  the 
coast." 

"Will  that  be  a  win  for  the  Germans,  even  then?" 

*'It  will  make  it  hell  in  the  Channel." 

"We  shall  transfer  our  base  to  St.-Nazaire." 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  335 

"France  won't  give  in  now,  whatever  happens.  And 
England  never  gives  in." 

"We're  exhausted,  all  the  same.  It's  a  question  of 
man-power." 

"They're  bound  to  take  Albert  to-night  or  to-morrow." 

"I  don't  see  that  at  all.     There's  still  a  line  .  .  ." 

"Aline!     A  handful  of  tired  men." 

"It  will  be  the  devil  if  they  get  into  Villers-Bretonneux 
to-night.  It  commands  Amiens.  They  could  blow  the 
place  off  the  map." 

"They  won't." 

"We  keep  on  saying,  'They  won't.'  We  said,  'They 
won't  get  the  Somme  crossings!'  but  they  did.  Let's 
face  it  squarely,  without  any  damned  false  optimism. 
That  has  been  our  curse  all  through." 

"  Better  than  your  damned  pessimism." 

"It's  quite  possible  that  they  will  be  in  this  city  to- 
night. What  is  to  keep  them  back?  There's  nothing  up 
the  road." 

"It  would  look  silly  if  we  were  all  captured  to-night. 
How  they  would  laugh!" 

"We  shouldn't  laugh,  though.  I  think  we  ought  to 
keep  an  eye  on  things." 

"How  are  we  to  know?  We  are  utterly  without  means 
of  communication.     Anything  may  happen  in  the  night." 

Something  happened  then.  It  was  half  past  seven  in 
the  evening.  There  were  two  enormous  crashes  outside 
the  windows  of  the  Hotel  du  Rhin.  All  the  windows 
shook  and  the  whole  house  seemed  to  rock.  There  was 
a  noise  of  rending  wood,  many  falls  of  bricks,  and  a  cas- 
cade of  falling  glass.  Instinctively  and  instantly  a  num- 
ber of  officers  threw  themselves  on  the  floor  to  escape 
flying  bits  of  steel  and  glass  splinters  blown  sideways. 
Then  some  one  laughed. 

"Not  this  time!" 

The  officers  rose  from  the  floor  and  took  their  places  at 
the  table,  and  lit  cigarettes  again.  But  they  were  list- 
ening.    We  listened  to  the  loud  hum  of  airplanes,  the 


336  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

well  known  "zooz-zooz"  of  the  Gothas'  double  fuselage. 
More  bombs  were  dropped  farther  into  the  town,  with  the 
same  sound  of  explosives  and  falling  masonry.  The  anti- 
aircraft guns  got  to  work  and  there  was  the  shrill  chorus 
of  shrapnel  shells  winging  over  the  roofs. 

"Bang!..  .Crash!" 

That  was  nearer  again. 

Some  of  the  officers  strolled  out  of  the  dining-room. 

"They're  making  a  mess  outside.  Perhaps  we'd  better 
get  away  before  it  gets  too  hot." 

Madame  from  the  cash-desk  turned  to  her  accounts 
again.  I  noticed  the  increasing  pallor  of  her  skin  beneath 
the  two  dabs  of  red.  But  she  controlled  her  nerves 
pluckily;  even  smiled,  too,  at  the  young  officer  who  was 
settling  up  for  a  group  of  others. 

The  moon  had  risen  over  the  houses  of  Amiens.  It 
was  astoundingly  bright  and  beautiful  in  a  clear  sky  and 
still  air,  and  the  streets  were  flooded  with  white  light, 
and  the  roofs  glittered  like  silver  above  intense  black 
shadows  under  the  gables,  where  the  rays  were  barred  by 
projecting  walls. 

"Curse  the  moon!"  said  one  officer.  "How  I  hate  its 
damned  light!" 

But  the  moon,  cold  and  smiling,  looked  down  upon  the 
world  at  war  and  into  this  old  city  of  Amiens,  in  which 
bombs  were  bursting.  Women  were  running  close  to  the 
walls.  Groups  of  soldiers  made  a  dash  from  one  doorway 
to  another.  Horses  galloped  with  heavy  wagons  up  the 
Street  of  the  Three  Pebbles,  while  shrapnel  flickered  in 
the  sky  above  them  and  paving-stones  were  hurled  up  in 
bursts  of  red  fire  and  explosions.  Many  horses  were 
killed  by  flying  chunks  of  steel.  They  lay  bleeding  mon- 
strously so  that  there  were  large  pools  of  blood  around 
them. 

An  officer  came  into  the  side  door  of  the  Hotel  du 
Rhin.  He  was  white  under  his  steel  hat,  which  he  pushed 
back  while  he  wiped  his  forehead. 

"A  fellow  was  killed  just  by  my  side,"  he  said.     "We 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  337 

were  standing  In  a  doorway  together  and  something 
caught  him  in  the  face.  He  fell  like  a  log,  without  a 
sound,  as  dead  as  a  door-nail." 

There  was  a  flight  of  midges  in  the  sky,  droning  with 
that  double  note  which  vibrated  Hke  'cello  strings,  very 
loudly,  and  with  that  sinister  noise  I  could  see  them  quite 
clearly  now  and  then  as  they  passed  across  the  face  of 
the  moon,  black,  flitting  things,  with  a  glitter  of  shrapnel 
below  them.  From  time  to  time  they  went  away  until 
they  were  specks  of  silver  and  black;  but  always  they 
came  back  again,  or  others  came,  with  new  stores  of 
bombs  which  they  unloaded  over  Amiens.  So  it  went 
on  all  through  the  night. 

I  went  up  to  a  bedroom  and  lay  on  a  bed,  trying  to 
sleep.  But  it  was  impossible.  My  will-power  was  not 
strong  enough  to  disregard  those  crashes  in  the  streets 
outside,  when  houses  collapsed  with  frightful  falling 
noises  after  bomb  explosions.  My  inner  vision  foresaw 
the  ceiling  above  me  pierced  by  one  of  those  bombs,  and 
the  room  in  which  I  lay  engulfed  in  the  chaos  of  this 
wing  of  the  Hotel  du  Rhin.  Many  times  I  said,  "To  hell 
with  it  all  .  .  .  I'm  going  to  sleep,"  and  then  sat  up  in  the 
darkness  at  the  renewal  of  that  tumult  and  switched  on 
the  electric  light.  No,  impossible  to  sleep!  Outside  in 
the  corridor  there  was  a  stampede  of  heavy  boots.  Offi- 
cers were  running  to  get  into  the  cellars  before  the  next 
crash,  which  might  fling  them  into  the  dismal  gulfs.  The 
thought  of  that  cellar  pulled  me  down  like  the  law  of 
gravity.  I  walked  along  the  corridor,  now  deserted,  and 
saw  a  stairway  littered  with  broken  glass,  which  my  feet 
scrunched.  There  were  no  lights  in  the  basement  of  the 
hotel,  but  I  had  a  flash-lamp,  going  dim,  and  by  its  pale 
eye  fumbled  my  way  to  a  stone  passage  leading  to  the 
cellar.  That  flight  of  stone  steps  was  littered  also  with 
broken  glass.  In  the  cellar  itself  was  a  mixed  company 
of  men  who  had  been  dining  earlier  in  the  evening,  joined 
by  others  who  had  come  in  from  the  streets  for  shelter. 
Some  of  them  had  dragged  down  mattresses  from  the  |3ed- 


338  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

rooms  and  were  lying  there  in  their  trench-coats,  with 
their  steel  hats  beside  them.  Others  were  sitting  on 
wooden  cases,  wearing  their  steel  hats,  while  there  were 
others  on  their  knees,  and  their  faces  in  their  hands,  try- 
ing to  sleep.  There  were  some  of  the  town  majors  who 
had  lost  their  towns,  and  some  Canadian  cavalry  officers, 
and  two  or  three  private  soldiers,  and  some  motor-drivers 
and  orderlies,  and  two  young  cooks  of  the  hotel  lying 
together  on  dirty  straw.  By  one  of  the  stone  pillars  of 
the  vaulted  room  two  American  war  correspondents — 
Sims  and  Mackenzie — were  sitting  on  a  packing-case 
playing  cards  on  a  board  between  them.  They  had 
stuck  candles  in  empty  wine-bottles,  and  the  flickering 
light  played  on  their  faces  and  cast  deep  shadows  under 
their  eyes.  I  stood  watching  these  men  in  that  cellar 
and  thought  what  a  good  subject  it  would  be  for  the  pen- 
cil of  Muirhead  Bone.  I  wanted  to  get  a  comfortable 
place.  There  was  only  one  place  on  the  bare  stones,  and 
when  I  lay  down  there  my  bones  ached  abominably,  and 
it  was  very  cold.  Through  an  aperture  in  the  window 
came  a  keen  draft  and  I  could  see  in  a  square  of  moon- 
lit sky  a  glinting  star.  It  was  not  much  of  a  cellar.  A 
direct  hit  on  the  Hotel  du  Rhin  would  make  a  nasty  mess 
in  this  vaulted  room  and  end  a  game  of  cards.  After 
fifteen  minutes  I  became  restless,  and  decided  that  the 
room  upstairs,  after  all,  was  infinitely  preferable  to  this 
damp  cellar  and  these  hard  stones.  I  returned  to  it  and 
lay  down  on  the  bed  again  and  switched  off  the  light. 
But  the  noises  outside,  the  loneliness  of  the  room,  the 
sense  of  sudden  death  fluking  overhead,  made  me  sit  up 
again  and  listen  intently.  The  Gothas  were  droning 
over  Amiens  again.  Many  houses  round  about  were 
being  torn  and  shattered.  What  a  wreckage  was  being 
made  of  the  dear  old  city!  I  paced  up  and  down  the 
room,  smoking  cigarettes,  one  after  another,  until  a  mighty 
explosion,  very  close,  made  all  my  nerves  quiver.  No, 
decidedly,  that  cellar  was  the  best  place.  If  one  had  to 
die  it  was  better  to  be  in  the  company  of  friends.     Down 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  339 

I  went  again,  meeting  an  officer  whom  I  knew  well.  He, 
too,  was  a  wanderer  between  the  cellar  and  the  abandoned 
bedrooms. 

"lam  getting  bored  with  this,"  he  said.  "It's  absurd  to 
think  that  this  filthy  cellar  is  any  safer  than  upstairs.  But 
the  dugout  sense  calls  one  down.    Anyhow,  I  can't  sleep." 

We  stood  looking  into  the  cellar.  There  was  something 
comical  as  well  as  sinister  in  the  sight  of  the  company 
there  sprawled  on  the  mattresses,  vainly  trying  to  extract 
comfort  out  of  packing-cases  for  pillows,  or  gas-bags  on 
steel  hats.  One  friend  of  ours,  a  cavalry  officer  of  the 
old  school,  looked  a  cross  between  Charlie  Chaplin  and 
or  Bill,  with  a  fierce  frown  above  his  black  mustache, 
Sims  and  Mackenzie  still  played  their  game  of  cards, 
silently,  between  the  guttering  candles. 

I  think  I  went  from  the  cellar  to  the  bedroom,  and  from 
the  bedroom  to  the  cellar,  six  times  that  night.  There 
was  never  ten  minutes'  relief  from  the  drone  of  Gothas, 
who  were  making  a  complete  job  of  Amiens.  It  was  at 
four  in  the  morning  that  I  met  the  same  officer  who  saw 
me  wandering  before. 

"Let  us  go  for  a  walk,"  he  said.  "The  birds  will  be 
away  by  dawn." 

It  was  nothing  like  dawn  when  we  went  out  of  the  side 
door  of  the  Hotel  du  Rhin  and  strolled  into  the  Street  of 
the  Three  Pebbles.  There  was  still  the  same  white  moon- 
Hght,  intense  and  glittering,  but  with  a  paler  sky.  It 
shone  down  upon  dark  pools  of  blood  and  the  carcasses 
of  horses  and  fragments  of  flesh,  from  which  a  sickly 
smell  rose.  The  roadway  was  littered  with  bits  of  timber 
and  heaps  of  masonry.  Many  houses  had  collapsed  into 
wild  chaos,  and  others,  though  still  standing,  had  been 
stripped  of  their  wooden  frontages  and  their  walls  were 
scarred  by  bomb-splinters.  Every  part  of  the  old  city, 
as  we  explored  it  later,  had  been  badly  mauled,  and  hun- 
dreds of  houses  were  utterly  destroyed.  The  air  raid 
ceased  at  4.30  a.m..  when  the  first  Hght  of  dawn  came  into 
the  sky.  .  .  . 


340  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

That  day  Amiens  was  evacuated,  by  command  of  the 
French  mihtary  authorities,  and  the  inhabitants  trailed 
out  of  the  city,  leaving  everything  behind  them.  I  saw 
the  women  locking  up  their  shops — ^^vvhere  there  were  any 
doors  to  shut  or  their  shop  still  standing.  Many  people 
must  have  been  killed  and  buried  in  the  night  beneath 
their  own  houses — I  never  knew  how  many.  The  fugi- 
tives escaped  the  next  phase  of  the  tragedy  in  Amiens 
when,  within  a  few  hours,  the  enemy  sent  over  the  first 
high  velocities,  and  for  many  weeks  afterward  scattered 
them  about  the  city,  destroying  many  other  houses.  A 
fire  started  by  these  shells  formed  a  great  gap  between 
the  rue  des  Jacobins  and  the  rue  des  Trois  Cailloux,  where 
there  had  been  an  arcade  and  many  good  shops  and 
houses.  I  saw  the  fires  smoldering  about  charred  beams 
and  twisted  ironwork  when  I  went  through  the  city  after 
the  day  of  exodus. 

XVII 

It  was  a  pitiful  adventure  to  go  through  Amiens  in  the 
days  of  its  desolation,  and  we  who  had  known  its  people 
so  well  hated  its  loneliness.  All  abandoned  towns  have  a 
tragic  aspect — I  often  think  of  Douai,  which  was  left  with 
all  its  people  under  compulsion  of  the  enemy — but  Amiens 
was  strangely  sinister  with  heaps  of  ruins  in  its  narrow 
streets,  and  the  abominable  noise  of  high-velocity  shells 
in  flight  above  its  roofs,  and  crashing  now  in  one  direction 
and  now  in  another. 

One  of  our  sentries  came  out  of  a  little  house  near  the 
Place  and  said: 

"Keep  as  much  as  possible  to  the  west  side  of  the  town, 
sir.  They've  been  falling  pretty  thick  on  the  east  side. 
Made  no  end  of  a  mess!" 

On  the  way  back  from  Villcrs-Bretonneux  and  the  Aus- 
tralian headquarters,  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Somme,  we 
ate  sandwiches  in  the  public  gardens  outside  the  Hotel 
du  Rhin.  There  were  big  shell-holes  in  the  flower-beds, 
and  trees  had  been  torn  down  and  flung  across  the  path- 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  341 

way,  and  there  was  a  broken  statue  lying  on  tlie  grass 
Some  French  and  Enghsh  soldiers  tramped  past.  Then 
there  was  no  living  soul  about  in  the  place  which  had 
been  so  crowded  with  life,  with  pretty  women  and  chil- 
dren, and  young  officers  doing  their  shopping,  and  the 
business  of  a  city  at  work. 

"It  makes  one  understand  what  Rome  was  like  after 
the  barbarians  had  sacked  and  left  it,"  said  a  friend  of 
mine. 

"There  is  something  ghastly  about  it,"  said  another. 

We  stood  round  the  Hotel  du  Rhin,  shut  up  and  aban- 
doned. The  house  next  door  had  been  wrecked,  and  it 
was  scarred  and  wounded,  but  still  stood  after  that  night 
of  terror. 

One  day  during  its  desolation  I  went  to  a  banquet  in 
Amiens,  in  the  cellars  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  It  was  to 
celebrate  the  Fourth  of  July,  and  an  invitation  had  been 
sent  to  me  by  the  French  commandant  de  place  and  the 
English  A.  P.  M. 

It  was  a  heau  geste^  gallant  and  romantic  in  those  days 
of  trouble,  when  Amiens  was  still  closely  beleaguered,  but 
safer  now  that  Australians  and  British  troops  were  hold- 
ing the  lines  strongly  outside,  with  French  on  their  right 
southward  from  Boves  and  Hangest  Wood.  The  French 
commandant  had  procured  a  collection  of  flags  and  his 
men  had  decorated  the  battered  city  with  the  Tricolor. 
It  even  fluttered  above  some  of  the  ruins,  as  though  for 
the  passing  of  a  pageant.  But  only  a  few  cars  entered  the 
city  and  drew  up  to  the  Town  Hall,  and  then  took  cover 
behind  the  walls. 

Down  below,  in  the  cellars,  the  damp  walls  were  gar- 
landed with  flowers  from  the  market -gardens  of  the 
Somme,  now  deserted  by  their  gardeners,  and  roses  were 
heaped  on  the  banqueting-table.  General  Monash,  com- 
manding the  Australian  corps,  was  there,  with  the  general 
of  the  French  division  on  his  right.  A  young  American 
officer  sat  very  grave  and  silent,  not,  perhaps,  understand- 
ing much  of  the  conversation  about  him,  because  most  of 


342  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  guests  were  French  officers,  with  Senators  and  Deputies 
of  Amiens  and  its  Department.  There  was  good  wine  to 
drink  from  the  cold  vaults  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  and  with 
the  scent  of  rose  and  hope  for  victory  in  spite  of  all  disas- 
ters—the German  offensive  had  been  checked  and  the 
Americans  were  now  coming  over  in  a  tide — it  was  a 
cheerful  luncheon-party.  The  old  general,  black-visaged, 
bullet-headed,  with  a  bristly  mustache  like  a  French  bull- 
terrier,  sat  utterly  silent,  eating  steadily  and  fiercely. 
But  the  French  co?nmajidant  de  place,  as  handsome  as 
Athos,  as  gay  as  D'Artagnan,  raised  his  glass  to  England 
and  France,  to  the  gallant  Allies,  and  to  all  fair  women. 
He  became  reminiscent  of  his  days  as  a  sous-lieutena7it. 
He  remembered  a  girl  called  Marguerite — she  was  ex- 
quisite; and  another  called  Yvonne — he  had  adored  her. 
O  life!  O  youth!  .  .  .  He  had  been  a  careless  young 
devil,  with  laughter  in  his  heart.  .  .  . 

XVIII 

I  suppose  it  was  three  months  later  when  I  saw  the 
first  crowds  coming  back  to  their  homes  in  Amiens.  The 
tide  had  turned  and  the  enemy  was  in  hard  retreat. 
Amiens  was  safe  again!  They  had  never  had  any  doubt 
of  this  homecoming  after  that  day  nearly  three  months 
before,  when,  in  spite  of  the  enemy's  being  so  close,  Foch 
said,  in  his  calm  way,  "I  guarantee  Amiens,"  They  be- 
lieved what  Marshal  Foch  said.  He  always  knew.  So 
now  they  were  coming  back  again  with  their  little  bundles 
and  their  babies  and  small  children  holding  their  hands 
or  skirts,  according  as  they  had  received  permits  from 
the  French  authorities.  They  were  the  lucky  ones  whose 
houses  still  existed.  They  were  conscious  of  their  own 
good  fortune  and  came  chattering  very  cheerfully  from 
the  station  up  the  Street  of  the  Three  Pebbles,  on  their 
way  to  their  streets.  But  every  now  and  then  they  gave 
a  cry  of  surprise  and  dismay  at  the  damage  done  to  other 
people's  houses. 


THE  HEART  OF  A  CITY  343 

*'0  Id  Id!     Regardcz  (a!  c  est  affrnix!" 

There  was  the  butcher's  shop,  destroyed;  and  the  house 
of  poor  Httle  Madeleine;  and  old  Christopher's  work- 
shop; and  the  milliner's  place,  where  they  used  to  buy 
their  Sunday  hats;  and  that  frightful  gap  where  the 
Arcade  had  been.  Truly,  poor  Amiens  had  suffered 
martyrdom;  though,  thank  God,  the  cathedral  still 
stood  in  glory,  hardly  touched,  with  only  one  little  shell- 
hole  through  the  roof. 

Terrible  was  the  damage  up  the  rue  de  Beauvais  and 
the  streets  that  went  out  of  it.  To  one  rubbish  heap 
which  had  been  a  corner  house  two  girls  came  back. 
Perhaps  the  French  authorities  had  not  had  that  one 
on  their  list.  The  girls  came  tripping  home,  with  light 
in  their  eyes,  staring  about  them,  ejaculating  pity  for 
neighbors  whose  houses  had  been  destroyed.  Then  sud- 
denly they  stood  outside  their  own  house  and  saw  that 
the  direct  hit  of  a  shell  had  knocked  it  to  bits.  The  light 
went  out  of  their  eyes.  They  stood  there  staring,  with 
their  mouths  open.  .  .  .  Some  Australian  soldiers  stood 
about  and  watched  the  girls,  understanding  the  drama. 

"Bitofamess,  missy!"  said  one  of  them.  "Not  much 
left  of  the  old  home,  eh?" 

The  girls  were  amazingly  brave.  They  did  not  weep. 
They  climbed  up  a  hillock  of  bricks  and  pulled  out  bits 
of  old,  familiar  things.  They  recovered  the  whole  of  a 
child's  perambulator,  with  its  wheels  crushed.  With  an 
air  of  triumph  and  shrill  laughter  they  turned  round  to 
the  Australians. 

^^ Pour  les  hehes!'*  they  cried. 

"While  there's  life  there's  hope,"  said  one  of  the  Aus- 
trahans,  with  sardonic  humor. 

So  the  martyrdom  of  Amiens  was  at  an  end,  and  life 
came  back  to  the  city  that  had  been  dead,  and  the  soul 
of  the  city  had  survived.  I  have  not  seen  it  since  then, 
but  one  day  I  hope  I  shall  go  back  and  shake  hands  with 
Gaston  the  waiter  and  say,  ^'Comment  ^a  va,  mon 
("How  goes  it,  my  old  one?")  and  stroll  into 


344  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  bookshop  and  say,  *' Bon  jour,  mademoiselle/''  and 
walk  round  the  cathedral  and  see  its  beauty  in  moon- 
light again  when  no  one  will  look  up  and  say,  "Curse 
the  moon!" 

There  will  be  many  ghosts  in  the  city  at  night — the 
ghosts  of  British  officers  and  men  who  thronged  those 
streets  in  the  great  war  and  have  now  passed  on. 


Part    Six 

PSYCHOLOGY  ON 
THE      SOMME 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME 


ALL  that  had  gone  before  was  but  a  preparation  for 
Xjl  what  now  was  to  come.  Until  July  i  of  1916  the 
British  armies  were  only  getting  ready  for  the  big  battles 
which  were  being  planned  for  them  by  something  greater 
than  generalship — by  the  fate  which  decides  the  doom 
of  men. 

The  first  battles  by  the  Old  Contemptibles,  down  from 
Mons  and  up  by  Ypres,  were  defensive  actions  of  rear- 
guards holding  the  enemy  back  by  a  thin  wall  of  living 
flesh,  while  behind  the  New  Armies  of  our  race  were  being 
raised. 

The  battles  of  Festubert,  Neuve  Chapelle,  Loos,  and 
all  minor  attacks  which  led  to  little  salients,  were  but 
experimental  adventures  in  the  science  of  slaughter,  badly 
bungled  in  our  laboratories.  They  had  no  meaning  apart 
from  providing  those  mistakes  by  which  men  learn; 
ghastly  mistakes,  burning  more  than  the  fingers  of  fife's 
children.  They  were  only  diversions  of  impatience  in  the 
monotonous  routine  of  trench  warfare  by  which  our  men 
strengthened  the  mud  walls  of  their  School  of  Courage, 
so  that  the  new  boys  already  coming  out  might  learn  their 
lessons  without  more  grievous  interruption  than  came 
from  the  daily  visits  of  that  Intruder  to  whom  the  fees 
were  paid.  In  those  two  years  it  was  France  which 
fought  the  greatest  battles,  flinging  her  sons  against  the 
enemy's  ramparts  in  desperate,  vain  attempts  to  breach 
them.  At  Verdun,  in  the  months  that  followed  the  first 
month  of  '16,  it  was  France  which  sustained  the  full 
weight  of  the  German  ofi'ensive  on  the  western  front  and 


348  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

broke  its  human  waves,  until  they  were  spent  in  a  sea  of 
blood,  above  which  the  French  poilus,  the  "hairy  ones," 
stood  panting  and  haggard,  on  their  death-strewn  rocks. 
The  Germans  had  failed  to  deal  a  fatal  blow  at  the  heart 
of  France.  France  held  her  head  up  still,  bleeding  from 
many  wounds,  but  defiant  still;  and  the  German  High 
Command,  aghast  at  their  own  losses — six  hundred  thou- 
sand casualties — already  conscious,  icily,  of  a  dwindling 
man-power  which  one  day  would  be  cut  off  at  its  source, 
rearranged  their  order  of  battle  and  shifted  the  balance 
of  their  weight  eastward,  to  smash  Russia.  Somehow  or 
other  they  must  smash  a  way  out  by  sledge-hammer 
blows,  left  and  right,  west  and  east,  from  that  ring  of 
nations  which  girdled  them.  On  the  west  they  would 
stand  now  on  the  defensive,  fairly  sure  of  their  strength, 
but  well  aware  that  it  would  be  tried  to  the  utmost  by 
that  enemy  which,  at  the  back  of  their  brains  (at  the 
back  of  the  narrow  brains  of  those  bald-headed  vultures 
on  the  German  General  Staff),  they  most  feared  as  their 
future  peril — England.  They  had  been  fools  to  let  the 
British  armies  grow  up  and  wax  so  strong.  It  was  the 
folly  of  the  madness  by  which  they  had  flung  the  gauntlet 
down  to  the  souls  of  proud  peoples  arrayed  against  them. 

Our  armies  were  now  strong  and  trained  and  ready. 
We  had  about  six  hundred  thousand  bayonet-men  in 
France  and  Flanders  and  in  England,  immense  reserves 
to  fill  up  the  gaps  that  would  be  made  in  their  ranks  before 
the  summer  foliage  turned  to  russet  tints. 

Our  power  in  artillery  had  grown  amazingly  since  the 
beginning  of  the  year.  Every  month  I  had  seen  many 
new  batteries  arrive,  with  clean  harness  and  yellow  straps, 
and  young  gunners  who  were  quick  to  get  their  targets. 
We  were  strong  in  "heavies,"  twelve-inchers,  9.2's,  eight- 
inchers,  4.2's,  mostly  howitzers,  with  the  long-muzzled 
sixty-pounders  terrible  in  their  long  range  and  destruc- 
tiveness.  Our  aircraft  had  grown  fast,  squadron  upon 
squadron,  and  our  aviators  had  been  trained  in  the  school 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  349 

of  General  Tiench.ircl,  who  sent  them  out  over  the  Ger- 
man Hnes  to  learn  how  to  fight,  and  how  to  scout,  and 
how  to  die  like  little  gentlemen. 

For  a  time  our  flying-men  had  gone  out  on  old-fashioned 
"buses"  —  primitive  machines  which  were  an  easy  prey 
to  the  fast-flying  P'okkers  who  waited  for  them  behind  a 
screen  of  cloud  and  then  "stooped"  on  them  like  hawks 
sure  of  their  prey.  But  to  the  airdrome  near  St.-Omer 
came  later  models,  out  of  date  a  few  weeks  after  their 
delivery,  replaced  by  still  more  powerful  types  more  per- 
fectly equipped  for  fighting.  Our  knights-errant  of  the 
air  were  challenging  the  German  champions  on  equal 
terms,  and  beating  them  back  from  the  lines  unless  they 
flew  in  clusters.  There  were  times  when  our  flying-men 
gained  an  absolute  supremacy  by  greater  daring — there 
was  nothing  they  did  not  dare — and  by  equal  skill.  As  a 
rule,  and  by  order,  the  German  pilots  flew  with  more 
caution,  not  wasting  their  strength  in  unequal  contests. 
It  was  a  sound  policy,  and  enabled  them  to  come  back 
again  in  force  and  hold  the  field  for  a  time  by  powerful 
concentrations.  But  in  the  battles  of  the  Somme  our 
airmen,  at  a  heavy  cost  of  life,  kept  the  enemy  down 
a  while  and  blinded  his  eyes. 

The  planting  of  new  airdromes  between  Albert  and 
Amiens,  the  long  trail  down  the  roads  of  lorries  packed 
with  wings  and  the  furniture  of  aircraft  factories,  gave 
the  hint,  to  those  who  had  eyes  to  see,  that  in  this  direc- 
tion a  merry  hell  was  being  prepared. 

There  were  plain  signs  of  massacre  at  hand  all  the  way 
from  the  coast  to  the  lines.  At  Etaples  and  other  places 
near  Boulogne  hospital  huts  and  tents  were  growing  like 
mushrooms  in  the  night.  From  casualty  clearing  stations 
near  the  front  the  wounded — the  human  wreckage  of 
routine  warfare — were  being  evacuated  "in  a  hurry"  to 
the  base,  and  from  the  base  to  England.  They  were  to 
be  cleared  out  of  the  way  so  that  all  the  wards  might  be 
empty  for  a  new  population  of  broken  men,  in  enormous 
numbers,     I  went  down  to  see  this  clearance,  this  tidying 


350  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

up.  There  was  a  sinister  suggestion  in  the  sohtude  that 
was  being  made  for  a  multitude  that  was  coming. 

"We  shall  be  very  busy,"  said  the  doctors. 

"We  must  get  all  the  rest  we  can  now,"  said  the  nurses. 

"In  a  little  while  every  bed  will  be  filled,"  said  the 
matrons. 

Outside  one  hut,  with  the  sun  on  their  faces,  were  four 
wounded  Germans,  Wiirtemburgers  and  Bavarians,  too 
ill  to  move  just  then.  Each  of  them  had  lost  a  leg  under 
the  surgeon's  knife.  They  were  eating  strawberries,  and 
seemed  at  peace.     I  spoke  to  one  of  them. 

^^Wie  hefinden  sie  sichF" 

**Ganz  wohl;  wir  sind  zufrieden  mit  unsere  behandlung." 

I  passed  through  the  shell-shock  wards  and  a  yard 
^here  the  "shell-shocks"  sat  about,  dumb,  or  making 
Iqueer,  foolish  noises,  or  staring  with  a  look  of  animal  fear 
(tin  their  eyes.  From  a  padded  room  came  a  sound  of 
['singing.  Some  idiot  of  war  was  singing  between  bursts 
of  laughter.  It  all  seemed  so  funny  to  him,  that  war,  so 
mad! 

"We  are  clearing  them  out,"  said  the  medical  officer. 
"There  will  be  many  more  soon." 

How  soon.^  That  was  a  question  nobody  could  answer. 
It  was  the  only  secret,  and  even  that  was  known  in  Lon- 
don, where  little  ladies  in  society  were  naming  the  date, 
"in  confidence,"  to  men  who  were  directly  concerned  with 
it — having,  as  they  knew,  only  a  few  more  weeks,  or  days, 
of  certain  life.  But  I  believe  there  were  not  many  officers 
who  would  have  surrendered  deliberately  all  share  in 
"The  Great  Push."  In  spite  of  all  the  horror  which  these 
young  officers  knew  it  would  involve,  they  had  to  be  "in 
it"  and  could  not  endure  the  thought  that  all  their  friends 
and  all  their  men  should  be  there  while  they  were  "out 
of  it."  A  decent  excuse  for  the  safer  side  of  it — yes.  A 
staff  job,  the  Intelligence  branch,  any  post  behind  the 
actual  shambles— and  thank  God  for  the  luck.  But  not 
an  absolute  shirk. 

Tents  were  being  pitched  in  many  camps  of  the  Somme, 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  351 

rows  and  rows  of  bell  tents  and  pavilions  stained  to  a 
reddish  brown.  Small  cities  of  them  were  growing  up 
on  the  right  of  the  road  between  Amiens  and  Albert — at 
Dernancourt  and  Daours  and  Vaux-sous  -  Corbie.  I 
thought  they  might  be  for  troops  In  reserve  until  I  saw 
large  flags  hoisted  to  tall  staff's  and  men  of  the  R.  A.  M.  C. 
busy  painting  signs  on  large  sheets  stretched  out  on  the 
grass.  It  was  always  the  same  sign — the  Sign  of  the  Cross 
that  was  Red. 

There  was  a  vast  traffic  of  lorries  on  the  roads,  and  trains 
were  traveling  on  light  railways  day  and  night  to  railroads 
just  beyond  shell-range.  What  was  all  the  weight  they 
carried?  No  need  to  ask.  The  "dumps"  were  being 
filled,  piled  up,  with  row  upon  row  of  shells,  covered  by 
tarpaulin  or  brushwood  when  they  were  all  stacked. 
Enormous  shells,  some  of  them,  like  gigantic  pigs  without 
legs.  Those  were  for  the  fifteen-Inchers,  or  the  9.2's. 
There  was  enough  high-explosive  force  littered  along  those 
roads  above  the  Somme  to  blow  cities  off' the  map, 

"It  does  one  good  to  see,"  said  a  cheery  fellow.  "The 
people  at  home  have  been  putting  their  backs  Into  It. 
Thousands  of  girls  have  been  packing  those  things.  Well 
done.  Munitions!" 

I  could  take  no  joy  In  the  sight,  only  a  grim  kind  of 
satisfaction  that  at  least  when  our  men  attacked  they 
would  have  a  power  of  artillery  behind  them.  It  might 
help  them  to  smash  through  to  a  finish,  if  that  were  the 
only  way  to  end  this  long-drawn  suicide  of  nations. 

My  friend  was  shocked  when  I  said: 

"Curse  all  munitions!" 

II 

The  British  armies  as  a  whole  were  not  gloomy  at  the 
approach  of  that  new  phase  of  war  which  they  called 
"The  Great  Push,"  as  though  it  v/ere  to  be  a  glorified 
football-match.  It  Is  difficult,  perhaps  impossible,  to 
know  the  thoughts  of  vast  masses  of  men  moved  by  some 


352  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

sensational  adventure.  But  a  man  would  be  a  liar  if  he 
pretended  that  British  troops  went  forward  to  the  great 
attack  with  hangdog  looks  or  any  visible  sign  of  fear  in 
their  souls.  I  think  most  of  them  were  uplifted  by  the 
belief  that  the  old  days  of  trench  warfare  were  over  for- 
ever and  that  they  would  break  the  enemy's  lines  by 
means  of  that  enormous  gun-power  behind  them,  and  get 
him  "on  the  run."  There  would  be  movement,  excite- 
ment, triumphant  victories — and  then  the  end  of  the 
war.  In  spite  of  all  risks  it  would  be  enormously  better 
than  the  routine  of  the  trenches.  They  would  be  getting 
on  with  the  job  instead  of  standing  still  and  being  shot 
at  by  invisible  earth-men. 

*'If  we  once  get  the  Germans  in  the  open  we  shall  go 
straight  through  them." 

That  was  the  opinion  of  many  young  officers  at  that 
time,  and  for  once  they  agreed  with  their  generals. 

It  seemed  to  be  a  question  of  getting  them  in  the  open, 
and  I  confess  that  when  I  studied  the  trench  maps  and  saw 
the  enemy's  defensive  earthworks  thirty  miles  deep  in 
one  vast  maze  of  trenches  and  redoubts  and  barbed  wire 
and  tunnels  I  was  appalled  at  the  task  which  lay  before 
our  men.  They  did  not  know  what  they  were  being  asked 
to  do. 

They  had  not  seen,  then,  those  awful  maps. 

We  were  at  the  height  and  glory  of  our  strength.  Out 
of  England  had  come  the  flower  of  our  youth,  and  out  of 
Scotland  and  Wales  and  Canada  and  Australia  and  New 
Zealand.  Even  out  of  Ireland,  with  the  i6th  Division 
of  the  south  and  west,  and  the  36th  of  Ulster.  The  New 
Armies  were  made  up  of  all  the  volunteers  who  had  an- 
swered the  call  to  the  colors,  not  waiting  for  the  conscrip- 
tion by  class,  which  followed  later.  They  were  the  ardent 
ones,  the  young  men  from  office,  factory,  shop,  and  field, 
university  and  public  school.  The  best  of  our  intelli- 
gence were  there,  the  noblest  of  our  manhood,  the  strength 
of  our  heart,  the  beauty  of  our  soul,  in  those  battalions 
which  soon  were  to  be  flung  into  explosive  fires. 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  353 

III 

In  the  month  of  May  a  new  type  of  manhood  was  filling 
the  old  roads  behind  the  front. 

I  saw  them  first  in  the  little  old  town  of  St. -Pol,  where 
always  there  was  a  coming  and  going  of  French  and  Eng- 
lish soldiers.  It  was  market-day  and  the  Grande  Place 
(not  very  grand)  was  crowded  with  booths  and  old  ladies 
in  black,  and  young  girls  with  checkered  aprons  over 
their  black  frocks,  and  pigs  and  clucking  fowls.  Suddenly 
the  people  scattered,  and  there  was  a  rumble  and  rattle 
of  wheels  as  a  long  line  of  transport  wagons  came  through 
the  square. 

"By  Jove!  .  .  .  Australians!" 

There  was  no  mistaking  them.  Their  slouch-hats  told 
one  at  a  glance,  but  without  them  I  should  have  known. 
They  had  a  distinctive  type  of  their  own,  which  marked 
them  out  from  all  other  soldiers  of  ours  along  those  roads 
of  war. 

They  were  hatchet-faced  fellows  who  came  riding 
through  the  little  old  market  town;  British  unmistakably, 
yet  not  English,  not  Irish,  nor  Scottish,  nor  Canadian. 
They  looked  hard,  with  the  hardness  of  a  boyhood  and 
a  breeding  away  from  cities  or,  at  least,  away  from  the 
softer  training  of  our  way  of  life.  They  had  merry  eyes 
(especially  for  the  girls  round  the  stalls),  but  resolute, 
clean-cut  mouths,  and  they  rode  their  horses  with  an  easy 
grace  in  the  saddle,  as  though  born  to  riding,  and  drove 
their  wagons  with  a  recklessness  among  the  little  booths 
that  was  justified  by  half  an  inch  between  an  iron  axle 
and  an  old  woman's  table  of  colored  ribbons. 

Those  clean-shaven,  sun-tanned,  dust-covered  men, 
who  had  come  out  of  the  hell  of  the  Dardanelles  and  the 
burning  drought  of  Egyptian  sands,  looked  wonderfully 
fresh  in  France.  Youth,  keen  as  steel,  with  a  flash  in  the 
eyes,  with  an  utter  carelessness  of  any  peril  ahead,  came 
riding  down  the  street. 

They  were  glad  to  be  there.     Everything  was  new  and 


354  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

good  to  them  (though  so  old  and  stale  to  many  of  us), 
and  after  their  adventures  in  the  East  they  found  it  splen- 
did to  be  in  a  civilized  country,  with  water  in  the  sky  and 
in  the  fields,  with  green  trees  about  them,  and  flowers  in 
the  grass,  and  white  people  who  were  friendly. 

When  they  came  up  in  the  train  from  Marseilles  they 
v/ere  all  at  the  windows,  drinking  in  the  look  of  the  French 
landscape,  and  one  of  their  officers  told  me  that  again 
and  again  he  heard  the  same  words  spoken  by  those  lads 
of  his. 

"It's  a  good  country  to  fight  for.  .  .  .  It's  like  being 
home  again." 

At  first  they  felt  chilly  in  France,  for  the  weather  had 
been  bad  for  them  during  the  first  weeks  in  April,  when 
the  wind  had  blown  cold  and  rain-clouds  had  broken  into 
sharp  squalls. 

Talking  to  the  men,  I  saw  them  shiver  a  little  and  heard 
their  teeth  chatter,  but  they  said  they  hked  a  moist 
climate  with  a  bite  in  the  wind,  after  all  the  blaze  and 
glare  of  the  Egyptian  sun. 

One  of  their  pleasures  in  being  there  was  the  oppor- 
tunity of  buying  sweets!  "They  can't  have  too  much 
of  them,"  said  one  of  the  officers,  and  the  idea  that  those 
hard  fellows,  whose  Homeric  fighting  qualities  had  been 
proved,  should  be  enthusiastic  for  lollipops  seemed  to  me 
an  amusing  touch  of  character.  For  tough  as  they  were, 
and  keen  as  they  were,  those  Australian  soldiers  were  but 
grown-up  children  with  a  wonderful  simplicity  of  youth 
and  the  gift  of  laughter. 

I  saw  them  laughing  when,  for  the  first  time,  they  tried 
on  the  gas-masks  which  none  of  us  ever  left  behind  when 
we  went  near  the  fighting-line.  That  horror  of  war  on 
the  western  front  was  new  to  them. 

Poison-gas  was  not  one  of  the  weapons  used  by  the 
Turks,  and  the  gas-masks  seemed  a  joke  to  the  groups 
of  Australians  trying  on  the  headgear  in  the  fields,  and 
changing  themselves  into  obscene  specters.  .  .  .  But  one 
man  watching  them  gave  a  shudder  and  said,  "It's  a 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  355 

pity  such  splendid  boys  should  have  to  risk  this  foul  way 
of  death."  They  did  not  hear  his  words,  and  we  heard 
their  laughter  again. 

On  that  first  day  of  their  arrival  I  stood  in  a  courtyard 
with  a  young  officer  whose  gray  eyes  had  a  fine,  clear 
light,  which  showed  the  spirit  of  the  man,  and  as  we 
talked  he  pointed  out  some  of  the  boys  who  passed  in 
and  out  of  an  old  barn.  One  of  them  had  done  fine  work 
on  the  Peninsula,  contemptuous  of  all  risks.  Another 
had  gone  out  under  heavy  fire  to  bring  in  a  wounded 
friend.  .  .  .  *'0h,  they  are  great  lads!"  said  the  captain 
of  the  compan3^  "But  now  they  want  to  get  at  the 
Germans  and  finish  the  job  quickly.  Give  them  a  fair 
chance  and  they'll  go  far." 

They  went  far,  from  that  time  to  the  end,  and  fought 
with  a  simple,  terrible  courage. 

They  had  none  of  the  discipline  imposed  upon  our  men 
by  Regular  traditions.  They  were  gipsy  fellows,  with 
none  but  the  gipsy  law  in  their  hearts,  intolerant  of 
restraint,  with  no  respect  for  rank  or  caste  unless  it 
carried  strength  with  it,  difficult  to  handle  behind  the 
lines,  quick-tempered,  foul-mouthed,  primitive  men,  but 
lovable,  human,  generous  souls  when  their  bayonets  were 
not  red  with  blood.  Their  discipline  in  battle  was  the 
best.  They  wanted  to  get  to  a  place  ahead.  They 
would  fight  the  devils  of  hell  to  get  there. 

The  New-Zealanders  followed  them,  with  rosy  cheeks 
like  English  boys  of  Kent,  and  more  gentle  manners  than 
the  other  "Anzacs,"  and  the  same  courage.  They  went 
far,  too,  and  set  the  pace  awhile  in  the  last  lap.  But  that, 
in  the  summer  of  '16,  was  far  away. 

In  those  last  days  of  June,  before  the  big  battles  began, 
the  countryside  of  the  Somme  valley  was  filled  with  splen- 
dor. The  mustard  seed  had  spread  a  yellow  carpet  in 
many  meadows  so  that  they  were  Fields  of  the  Cloth  of 
Gold,  and  clumps  of  red  clover  grew  like  flowers  of  blood. 
The  hedges  about  the  villages  of  Picardy  were  white  with 
elderflower  and  drenched  with  scent.     It  was  haymaking 


356  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

time  and  French  women  and  children  were  tossing  the 
hay  on  wooden  pitchforks  during  hot  days  which  came 
between  heavy  rains.  Our  men  were  marching  through 
that  beauty,  and  were  conscious  of  it,  I  think,  and  glad 
of  life. 

IV 

Boulogne  was  a  port  through  which  all  our  3^outh  passed 
between  England  and  the  long,  straight  road  which  led  to 
No  Man's  Land.  The  seven-days-leave  men  were  com- 
ing back  by  every  tide,  and  all  other  leave  was  canceled. 

New  "drafts"  were  pouring  through  the  port  by  tens 
of  thousands — all  manner  of  men  of  all  our  breed  march- 
ing in  long  columns  from  the  quayside,  where  they  had 
orders  yelled  at  them  through  megaphones  by  A.  P.  M.'s, 
R.  T.  O.'s,  A.  M.  L.  O.'s,  and  other  blue-tabbed  officers 
who  dealt  with  them  as  cattle  for  the  slaughter-houses. 
I  watched  them  landing  from  the  transports  which  came 
in  so  densely  crowded  with  the  human  freight  that  the 
men  were  wedged  together  on  the  decks  like  herrings  in 
barrels.  They  crossed  from  one  boat  to  another  to  reach 
the  gangways,  and  one  by  one,  interminably  as  it  seemed, 
with  rifle  gripped  and  pack  hunched,  and  steel  hat  clatter- 
ing like  a  tinker's  kettle,  came  down  the  inclined  plank 
and  lurched  ashore.  They  were  English  lads  from  every 
count}:;  Scots,  Irish,  Welsh,  of  every  regiment;  Aus- 
tralians, New-Zealanders,  South  Africans,  Canadians, 
West  Indian  negroes  of  the  Garrison  Artillery;  Sikhs, 
Pathans,  and  Dogras  of  the  Indian  Cavalry.  Some  of 
them  had  been  sick  and  there  was  a  greenish  pallor  on 
their  faces.  Most  of  them  were  deeply  tanned.  Many 
of  them  stepped  on  the  quayside  of  France  for  the  first 
time  after  months  of  training,  and  I  could  tell  those, 
sometimes,  by  the  furtive  look  they  gave  at  the  crowded 
scene  about  them,  and  by  a  sudden  glint  in  their  eyes,  a 
faint  reflection  of  the  emotion  that  was  in  them,  because 
this  was  another  stage  on  their  adventure  of  war,  and  the 
drawbridge  was   down   at  last  between  them   and  the 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  357 

enemy.  That  was  all— just  that  look,  and  lips  tightened 
now  grimly,  and  the  pack  hunched  higher.  Then  they 
fell  in  by  number  and  marched  away,  with  Red-caps  to 
guard  them,  across  the  bridge,  into  the  town  of  Boulogne 
and  beyond  to  the  great  camp  near  Etaples  (and  near 
the  hospital,  so  that  German  aircraft  had  a  good  argu- 
ment for  smashing  Red  Cross  huts),  where  some  of  them 
would  wait  until  somebody  said,  ''You're  wanted."  They 
were  wanted  in  droves  as  soon  as  the  fighting  began  on 
the  first  day  of  July. 

The  bun-shops  in  Boulogne  were  filled  with  nurses, 
V.  A.  D.'s,  all  kinds  of  girls  in  uniforms  which  glinted 
with  shoulder-straps  and  buttons.  They  ate  large  quan- 
tities of  buns  at  odd  hours  of  mornings  and  afternoons. 
Flying-men  and  officers  of  all  kinds  waiting  for  trains 
crowded  the  Folkestone  Hotel  and  restaurants,  where 
they  spent  two  hours  over  luncheon  and  three  hours  over 
dinner,  drinking  red  wine,  talking  "shop" — the  shop  of 
trench-mortar  units,  machine-gun  sections,  cavalry  squad- 
rons, air-fighting,  gas  schools,  and  anti-gas  schools.  Regu- 
lar inhabitants  of  Boulogne,  officers  at  the  base,  passed 
to  inner  rooms  with  French  ladies  of  dangerous  appear- 
ance, and  the  transients  envied  them  and  said:  "Those 
fellows  have  all  the  luck!  What's  their  secret?  How  do 
they  arrange  these  cushie  jobs?"  From  open  windows 
came  the  music  of  gramophones.  Through  half-drawn 
curtains  there  were  glimpses  of  khaki  tunics  and  Sam 
Brown  belts  in  juxtaposition  with  silk  blouses  and  coiled 
hair  and  white  arms.  Opposite  the  Folkestone  there  was 
a  park  of  ambulances  driven  by  "Scottish  women,"  who 
were  always  on  the  move  from  one  part  of  the  town  to 
the  other.  Motor-cars  came  hooting  with  staff'-officers, 
all  aglow  in  red  tabs  and  arm-bands,  thirsty  for  little 
cocktails  after  a  dusty  drive.  Everywhere  in  the  streets 
and  on  the  esplanade  there  was  incessant  saluting.  The 
arms  of  men  were  never  still.  It  was  like  the  St.  Vitus 
disease.     Tommies    and   Jocks   saluted   every   subaltern 

with  an  automatic  gesture  of  convulsive  energy.     Every 
24 


358  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

subaltern  ackno-wledged  these  movements  and  in  turn 
saluted  a  multitude  of  majors,  colonels,  generals.  The 
thing  became  farcical,  a  monstrous  absurdity  of  human 
relationship,  yet  pleasing  to  the  vanity  of  men  lifted  up 
above  the  lowest  caste.  It  seemed  to  me  an  intensifica- 
tion of  the  snob  instinct  in  the  soul  of  man.  Only  the 
Australians  stood  out  against  it,  and  went  by  all  officers 
except  their  own  with  a  careless  slouch  and  a  look  of  "To 
hell  with  all  that  handwagging." 

Seated  on  high  stools  in  the  Folkestone,  our  young 
officers  clinked  their  cocktails,  and  then  whispered 
together. 

"When's  it  coming.?" 

*'In  a  few  days.  .  .  .  I'm  for  the  Gommecourt  sector." 

"Do  you  think  we  shall  get  through.'*" 

"Not  a  doubt  of  it.  The  cavalry  are  massing  for  a 
great  drive.  As  soon  as  we  make  the  gap  they'll  ride 
into  the  blue." 

"By  God!  .  .  .  There'll  be  some  slaughter!" 

"I  think  the  old  Boche  will  crack  this  time." 

"Well,  cheerio!" 

There  was  a  sense  of  enormous  drama  at  hand,  and 
the  excitement  of  it  in  boys'  hearts  drugged  all  doubts 
and  fears.  It  was  only  the  older  men,  and  the  intro- 
spective, who  suffered  from  the  torture  of  apprehension. 
Even  timid  fellows  in  the  ranks  were,  I  imagine,  strength- 
ened and  exalted  by  the  communal  courage  of  their  com- 
pany or  battalion,  for  courage  as  well  as  fear  is  infectious, 
and  the  psychology  of  the  crowd  uplifts  the  individual  to 
immense  heights  of  daring  when  alone  he  would  be  terror- 
stricken.  The  public-school  spirit  of  pride  in  a  name 
and  tradition  was  in  each  battalion  of  the  New  Army, 
extended  later  to  the  division,  which  became  the  unit  of 
esprit  de  corps.  They  must  not  "let  the  battalion  down." 
They  would  do  their  damnedest  to  get  farther  than  any 
other  crowd,  to  bag  more  prisoners,  to  gain  more  "kudos." 
There  was  rivalry  even  among  the  platoons  and  the  com- 
panies.    "A"  Company  would  show  "B"  Company  the 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  359 

way  to  go!  Their  sergeant-major  was  a  great  fellow! 
Their  platoon  commanders  were  fine  kids!  With  any- 
thing like  a  chance — " 

In  that  spirit,  as  far  as  I — an  outsider — could  see  and 
hear,  did  our  battalions  of  boys  march  forward  to  "The 
Great  Push,"  whistling,  singing,  jesting,  until  their  lips 
were  dry  and  their  throats  parched  in  the  dust,  and  even 
the  merriest  jesters  of  all  were  silent  under  the  weight  of 
their  packs  and  rifles.  So  they  moved  up  day  by  day 
through  the  beauty  of  that  June  in  France — thousands  of 
men — hundreds  of  thousands — to  the  edge  of  the  battle- 
fields of  the  Somme,  where  the  enemy  was  intrenched  in 
fortress  positions  and  where  already,  before  the  last  days 
of  June,  gun-fire  was  flaming  over  a  vast  sweep  of  country. 


On  the  ist  of  July,  1916,  began  those  prodigious  battles 
which  only  lulled  down  at  times  during  two  and  a  half 
years  more,  when  our  British  armies  fought  with  des- 
perate sacrificial  valor  beyond  all  previous  reckoning; 
when  the  flower  of  our  youth  was  cast  into  that  furnace 
month  after  month,  recklessly,  with  prodigal,  spendthrift 
haste;  when  those  boys  were  mown  down  in  swaths  by 
machine-guns,  blown  to  bits  by  shell-fire,  gassed  in  thou- 
sands, until  all  that  country  became  a  graveyard;  when 
they  went  forward  to  new  assaults  or  fell  back  in  rear- 
guard actions  with  a  certain  knowledge  that  they  had  in 
their  first  attack  no  more  than  one  chance  in  five  of 
escape,  next  time  one  chance  in  four,  then  one  chance  in 
three,  one  chance  in  two,  and  after  that  no  chance  at  all, 
on  the  fine  of  averages,  as  worked  out  by  their  experience 
of  luck.  More  boys  came  out  to  take  their  places,  and 
more,  and  more,  conscripts  following  volunteers,  younger 
brothers  following  elder  brothers.  Never  did  they  revolt 
from  the  orders  that  came  to  them.  Never  a  battalion 
broke  into  mutiny  against  inevitable  martyrdom.  They 
were  obedient  to  the  command  above  them.    Their  dis-' 


36o  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

cipline  did  not  break.  However  profound  was  the  de- 
spair of  the  individual — and  it  was,  I  know,  deep  as  the 
wells  of  human  tragedy  in  many  hearts — the  mass  moved 
as  it  was  directed,  backward  or  forward,  this  way  and 
that,  from  one  shambles  to  another,  in  mud  and  in  blood, 
with  the  same  massed  valor  as  that  which  uplifted  them 
before  that  first  day  of  July  with  an  intensified  pride  in 
the  fame  of  their  divisions,  with  a  more  eager  desire  for 
public  knowledge  of  their  deeds,  with  a  loathing  of  war's 
misery,  with  a  sense  of  its  supreme  folly,  yet  with  a 
refusal  in  their  souls  to  acknowledge  defeat  or  to  stop 
this  side  of  victory.  In  each  battle  there  were  officers 
and  men  who  risked  death  deliberately,  and  in  a  kind  of 
ecstasy  did  acts  of  superhuman  courage;  and  because  of 
the  number  of  these  feats  the  record  of  them  is  monoto- 
nous, dull,  familiar.  The  mass  followed  their  lead,  and 
even  poor  coward-hearts,  of  whom  there  were  many,  as 
in  all  armies,  had  courage  enough,  as  a  rule,  to  get  as  far 
as  the  center  of  the  fury  before  their  knees  gave  way  or 
they  dropped  dead. 

Each  wave  of  boyhood  that  came  out  from  England 
brought  a  new  mass  of  physical  and  spiritual  valor  as 
great  as  that  which  was  spent,  and  in  the  end  it  was  an 
irresistible  tide  which  broke  down  the  last  barriers  and 
swept  through  in  a  rush  to  victory — to  victory  which  we 
gained  at  the  cost  of  nearly  a  million  dead,  and  a  high 
sum  of  Hving  agony,  and  all  our  wealth,  and  a  spiritual 
bankruptcy  worse  than  material  loss,  so  that  now  England 
is  for  a  time  sick  to  death  and  drained  of  her  old  pride 
and  power. 

VI 

I  remember,  as  though  it  were  yesterday  in  vividness 
and  a  hundred  years  ago  in  time,  the  bombardment 
which  preceded  the  battles  of  the  Somme.  With  a  group 
of  officers  I  stood  on  the  high  ground  above  Albert,  look- 
ing over  to  Gommecourt  and  Thiepval  and  La  Boisselle, 
on  the  left  side  of  the  German  salient,  and  then,  by  cross- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  361 

ing  the  road,  to  Fricourt,  Mametz,  and  Montauban  on 
the  southern  side.  From  Albert  westward  past  Thiepval 
Wood  ran  the  Httle  river  of  the  Ancre,  and  on  the  German 
side  the  ground  rose  steeply  to  Usna  Hill  by  La  Boisselle, 
and  to  Thiepval  Chateau  above  the  wood.  It  was  a 
formidable  defensive  position — one  fortress  girdled  by  line 
after  line  of  trenches,  and  earthwork  redoubts,  and  deep 
tunnels,  and  dugouts  in  which  the  German  troops  could 
live  below  ground  until  the  moment  of  attack.  The 
length  of  our  front  of  assault  was  about  twenty  miles 
round  the  side  of  the  salient  to  the  village  of  Bray,  on  the 
Somme,  where  the  French  joined  us  and  continued  the 
battle. 

From  w^here  we  stood  we  could  see  a  wide  panorama  of 
the  German  positions,  and  beyond,  now  and  then,  when 
the  smoke  of  shell-fire  drifted,  I  caught  glimpses  of  green 
fields  and  flower  patches  beyond  the  trench  lines,  and 
church  spires  beyond  the  range  of  guns  rising  above 
clumps  of  trees  in  summer  foliage.  Immediately  below, 
in  the  foreground,  was  the  village  of  Albert,  not  much 
ruined  then,  with  its  red-brick  church  and  tower  from 
which  there  hung,  head  downward,  the  Golden  Virgin 
with  her  Babe  outstretched  as  though  as  a  peace-ofFering 
over  all  this  strife.  That  leaning  statue,  which  I  had 
often  passed  on  the  way  to  the  trenches,  was  now  re- 
vealed brightly  with  a  golden  glamour,  as  sheets  of  flame 
burst  through  a  heavy  veil  of  smoke  over  the  valley.  In 
a  field  close  by  some  troops  were  being  ticketed  with 
yellow  labels  fastened  to  their  backs.  It  was  to  distin- 
guish them  so  that  artillery  observers  might  know  them 
from  the  enemy  when  their  turn  came  to  go  into  the 
battleground.  Something  in  the  sight  of  those  yellow 
tickets  made  me  feel  sick.  .  .  .  Away  behind,  a  French 
farmer  was  cutting  his  grass  with  a  long  scythe,  in  steady, 
sweeping  strokes.  Only  now  and  then  did  he  stand  to 
look  over  at  the  most  frightful  picture  of  battle  ever 
seen  until  then  by  human  eyes.  I  wondered,  and  wonder 
still,  what  thoughts  were  passing  through  that  old  brain 


362  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

to  keep  him  at  his  work,  quietly,  steadily,  on  the  edge  of 
hell.  For  there,  quite  close  and  clear,  was  hell,  ot  man's 
making,  produced  by  chemists  and  scientists,  after  cen- 
turies in  search  of  knowledge.  There  were  the  fires  of 
hate,  produced  out  of  the  passion  of  humanity  after  a 
thousand  years  of  Christendom  and  of  progress  in  the 
arts  of  beauty.  There  was  the  devil-worship  of  our  poor, 
damned  human  race,  where  the  most  civihzed  nations  of 
the  world  were  on  each  side  of  the  bonfires.  It  was  worth 
watching  by  a  human  ant. 

I  remember  the  noise  of  our  guns  as  all  our  batteries 
took  their  parts  in  a  vast  orchestra  of  drum-fire.  The 
tumult  of  the  field-guns  merged  into  thunderous  waves. 
Behind  me  a  fifteen-inch — "Grandmother" — fired  single 
strokes,  and  each  one  was  an  enormous  shock.  Shells 
were  rushing  through  the  air  like  droves  of  giant  birds 
with  beating  wings  and  with  strange  wailings.  The  Ger- 
man lines  were  in  eruption.  Their  earthworks  were  being 
tossed  up,  and  fountains  of  earth  sprang  up  between 
columns  of  smoke,  black  columns  and  white,  which  stood 
rigid  for  a  few  seconds  and  then  sank  into  the  banks  of 
fog.  Flames  gushed  up  red  and  angry,  rending  those 
banks  of  mist  with  strokes  of  lightning.  In  their  light 
I  saw  trees  falling,  branches  tossed  like  twigs,  black 
things  hurtling  through  space.  In  the  night  before  the 
battle,  when  that  bombardment  had  lasted  several  days 
and  nights,  the  fury  was  intensified.  Red  flames  darted 
hither  and  thither  like  httle  red  devils  as  our  trench- 
mortars  got  to  work.  Above  the  slogging  of  the  guns 
there  were  louder,  earth-shaking  noises,  and  volcanoes  of 
earth  and  fire  spouted  as  high  as  the  clouds.  One  con- 
vulsion of  this  kind  happened  above  Usna  Hill,  with  a 
long,  terrifying  roar  and  a  monstrous  gush  of  flame. 

"What  is  that?"  asked  some  one. 

"It  must  be  the  mine  we  charged  at  La  Boisselle.  The 
biggest  that  has  ever  been." 

It  was  a  good  guess.  When,  later  in  the  battle,  I  stood 
by  the  crater  of  that  mine  and  looked  into  its  gulfs  I 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  363 

wondered  how  many  Germans  had  been  hurled  into  eter- 
nity when  the  earth  had  opened.  The  grave  was  big 
enough  for  a  battahon  of  men  with  horses  and  wagons, 
below  the  chalk  of  the  crater's  lips.  Often  on  the  way  to 
Bapaume  I  stepped  off  the  road  to  look  into  that  white 
gulf,  remembering  the  moment  when  I  saw  the  gust  of 
flame  that  rent  the  earth  about  it. 


VII 

There  was  the  illusion  of  victory  on  that  first  day  of 
the  Somme  battles,  on  the  right  of  the  line  by  Fricourt, 
and  it  was  not  until  a  day  or  two  later  that  certain  awful 
rumors  I  had  heard  from  wounded  men  and  ofl&cers  who 
had  attacked  on  the  left  up  by  Gommecourt,  Thiepval, 
and  Serre  were  confirmed  by  certain  knowledge  of  tragic 
disaster  on  that  side  of  the  battle-line. 

The  illusion  of  victory,  with  all  the  price  and  pain  of 
it,  came  to  me  when  I  saw  the  German  rockets  rising 
beyond  the  villages  of  Mametz  and  Montauban  and  our 
barrage  fire  Hfting  to  a  range  beyond  the  first  lines  of 
German  trenches,  and  our  support  troops  moving  for- 
ward in  masses  to  captured  ground.  We  had  broken 
through!  By  the  heroic  assault  of  our  English  and 
Scottish  troops — West  Yorks,  Yorks  and  Lanes,  Lincolns, 
Durhams,  Northumberland  Fusiliers,  Norfolks  and  Berk- 
shires,  Liverpools,  Manchesters,  Gordons,  and  Royal 
Scots,  all  those  splendid  men  I  had  seen  marching  to  their 
lines — we  had  sm.ashed  through  the  ramparts  of  the  Ger- 
man fortress,  through  that  maze  of  earthworks  and  tun- 
nels which  had  appalled  me  when  I  saw  them  on  the  maps, 
and  over  which  I  had  gazed  from  time  to  time  from  our 
front-line  trenches  when  those  places  seemed  impreg- 
nable. I  saw  crowds  of  prisoners  coming  back  under 
escort — fifteen  hundred  had  been  counted  in  the  first 
day — and  they  had  the  look  of  a  defeated  army.  Our 
lightly  wounded  men,  thousands  of  them,  were  shouting 
and  laughing  as  they  came  down  behind  the  lines,  wearing 


364  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

German  caps  and  helmets.  From  Amiens  civilians  strag- 
gled out  along  the  roads  as  far  as  they  were  allowed  by 
military  police,  and  waved  hands  and  cheered  those  boys 
of  ours.  ''Vive  I'Jngleterre!"  cried  old  men,  raising  their 
hats.  Old  women  wept  at  the  sight  of  those  gay  wounded 
(the  lightly  touched,  glad  of  escape,  rejoicing  in  their 
luck  and  in  the  glory  of  life  which  was  theirs  still)  and 
cried  out  to  them  with  shrill  words  of  praise  and  exultation. 

"Nous  les  aurons — les  sales  Bodies!  Ah,  Us  sont  foutus, 
ces  bandits!  Cest  la  victoire,  grace  a  vous,  petits  soldats 
anglais!'' 

Victory !  The  spirit  of  victory  in  the  hearts  of  fighting- 
men,  and  of  women  excited  by  the  sight  of  those  ban- 
daged heads,  those  bare,  brawny  arms  splashed  with  blood, 
those  laughing  heroes. 

It  looked  like  victory  (in  those  days,  as  war  correspond- 
ents, we  were  not  so  expert  in  balancing  the  profit  and 
loss  as  afterward  we  became)  when  I  went  into  Fricourt 
on  the  third  day  of  battle,  after  the  last  Germans,  who  had 
clung  on  to  its  ruins,  had  been  cleared  out  by  the  York- 
shires and  Lincolns  of  the  21st  Division  (that  division 
which  had  been  so  humiliated  at  Loos  and  now  was  won- 
derful in  courage),  and  when  the  Manchesters  and  Gor- 
dons of  the  30th  Division  had  captured  Montauban  and 
repulsed  fierce  counter-attacks. 

It  looked  like  victory,  because  of  the  German  dead  that 
lay  there  in  their  battered  trenches  and  the  filth  and  stench 
of  death  over  all  that  mangled  ground,  and  the  enormous 
destruction  wrought  by  our  guns,  and  the  fury  of  fire 
which  we  were  still  pouring  over  the  enemy's  lines  from 
batteries  which  had  moved  forward. 

I  went  down  flights  of  steps  into  German  dugouts, 
astonished  by  their  depth  and  strength.  Our  men  did 
not  build  like  this.  This  German  industry  was  a  rebuke 
to  us — yet  we  had  captured  their  work  and  the  dead 
bodies  of  their  laborers  lay  in  those  dark  caverns,  killed 
by  our  bombers,  who  had  flung  down  hand-grenades.  I 
drew  back  from  those  fat  corpses.     They  looked  mon- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  365 

strous,  lying  there  crumpled  up,  amid  a  foul  litter  of 
clothes,  stick-bombs,  old  boots,  and  bottles.  Groups  of 
dead  lay  in  ditches  which  had  once  been  trenches,  flung 
into  chaos  by  that  bombardment  I  had  seen.  They  had 
been  bayoneted.  I  remember  one  man— an  elderly  fellow 
— sitting  up  with  his  back  to  a  bit  of  earth  with  his  hands 
half  raised.  He  was  smiling  a  little,  though  he  had  been 
stabbed  through  the  belly  and  was  stone  dead.  .  .  .  Vic- 
tory! .  .  .  some  of  the  German  dead  were  young  boys,  too 
young  to  be  killed  for  old  men's  crimes,  and  others  might 
have  been  old  or  young.  One  could  not  tell,  because 
they  had  no  faces,  and  were  just  masses  of  raw  flesh  in 
rags  and  uniforms.  Legs  and  arms  lay  separate,  without 
any  bodies  thereabouts. 

Outside  Montauban  there  was  a  heap  of  our  own  dead. 
Young  Gordons  and  Manchesters  of  the  30th  Division, 
they  had  been  caught  by  blasts  of  machine-gun  fire — but 
our  dead  seemed  scarce  in  the  places  where  I  walked. 

Victory?  .  .  .  Well,  we  had  gained  some  ground,  and 
many  prisoners,  and  here  and  there  some  guns.  But  as 
I  stood  by  Montauban  I  saw  that  our  line  was  a  sharp 
saHent  looped  round  Mametz  village  and  then  dipping 
sharply  southward  to  Fricourt.  O  God!  had  we  only 
made  another  salient  after  all  that  monstrous  eff'ort.''  To 
the  left  there  was  fury  at  La  Boisselle,  where  a  few 
broken  trees  stood  black  on  the  sky-line  on  a  chalky  ridge. 
Storms  of  German  shrapnel  were  bursting  there,  and 
machine-guns  were  firing  in  spasms.  In  Contalmaison, 
round  a  chateau  which  stood  high  above  ruined  houses, 
shells  were  bursting  with  thunderclaps — our  shells.  Ger- 
man gunners  in  invisible  batteries  were  sweeping  our 
lines  with  barrage-fire — it  roamed  up  and  down  this  side 
of  Montauban  Wood,  just  ahead  of  me,  and  now  and  then 
shells  smashed  among  the  houses  and  barns  of  Fricourt, 
and  over  Mametz  there  was  suddenly  a  hurricane  of 
"hate."  Our  men  were  working  like  ants  in  those  muck 
heaps,  a  battalion  moved  up  toward  Boisselle.  From  a 
ridge  above  Fricourt,  where  once  I  had  seen  a  tall  crucifix 


366  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

between  two  trees,  which  our  men  called  the  ''Poodles," 
a  body  of  men  came  down  and  shrapnel  burst  among 
them  and  they  fell  and  disappeared  in  tall  grass.  Stretcher- 
bearers  came  slowly  through  Fricourt  village  with  Hving 
burdens.  Some  of  them  were  German  soldiers  carrying 
our  wounded  and  their  own.  Walking  wounded  hobbled 
slowly  with  their  arms  round  each  other's  shoulders,  Ger- 
mans and  English  together.  A  boy  in  a  steel  hat  stopped 
me  and  held  up  a  bloody  hand.  "A  bit  of  luck!"  he  said. 
"I'm  off,  after  eighteen  months  of  it." 

German  prisoners  came  down  with  a  few  English  soldiers 
as  their  escort.  I  saw  distant  groups  of  them,  and  a  shell 
smashed  into  one  group  and  scattered  it.  The  living  ran, 
leaving  their  dead.  Ambulances  driven  by  daring  fellows 
drove  to  the  far  edge  of  Fricourt,  not  a  healthy  place,  and 
loaded  up  with  wounded  from  a  dressing  station  in  a 
tunnel  there. 

It  was  a  wonderful  picture  of  war  in  all  its  filth  and 
shambles.  But  was  it  Victory?  ...  I  knew  then  that  it 
was  only  a  breach  in  the  German  bastion,  and  that  on 
the  left,  Gommecourt  way,  there  had  been  black  tragedy. 

VIII 

On  the  left,  where  the  8th  and  loth  Corps  were  direct- 
ing operations,  the  assault  had  been  delivered  by  the  4th, 
29th,  36th,  49th,  3 2d,  8th,  and  56th  Divisions. 

The  positions  in  front  of  them  were  Gommecourt  and 
Beaumont  Hamel  on  the  left  side  of  the  River  Ancre,  and 
Thiepval  Wood  on  the  right  side  of  the  Ancre  leading  up 
to  Thiepval  Chateau  on  the  crest  of  the  cliff.  These  were 
the  hardest  positions  to  attack,  because  of  the  rising 
ground  and  the  immense  strength  of  the  enemy's  earth- 
works and  tunneled  defenses.  But  our  generals  were 
confident  that  the  gun-power  at  their  disposal  was  suffi- 
cient to  smash  down  that  defensive  system  and  make  an 
easy  way  through  for  the  infantry.  They  were  wrong. 
In  spite  of  that  tornado  of  shell-fire  which  I  had  seen 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  367 

tearing  up  the  earth,  many  tunnels  were  still  unbroken, 
and  out  of  them  came  masses  of  German  machine-gunners 
and  riflemen,  when  our  infantry  rose  from  their  own 
trenches  on  that  morning  of  July  ist. 

Our  guns  had  shifted  their  barrage  forward  at  that 
moment,  farther  ahead  of  the  infantry  than  was  after- 
ward allowed,  the  men  being  trained  to  follow  close  to  the 
Hnes  of  bursting  shells,  trained  to  expect  a  number  of 
casualties  from  their  own  guns — it  needs  some  training! 
— in  order  to  secure  the  general  safety  gained  by  keeping 
the  enemy  below  ground  until  our  bayonets  were  round 
his  dugouts. 

The  Germans  had  been  trained,  too,  to  an  act  of  amaz- 
ing courage.  Their  discipline,  that  immense  power  of 
discipline  which  dominates  men  in  the  mass,  was  strong 
enough  to  make  them  obey  the  order  to  rush  through 
that  barrage  of  ours,  that  advancing  wall  of  explosion, 
and,  if  they  lived  through  it,  to  face  our  men  in  the  open 
with  massed  machine-gun  fire.  So  they  did;  and  as  Eng- 
hsh,  Irish,  Scottish,  and  Welsh  battahons  of  our  assault- 
ing divisions  trudged  forward  over  what  had  been  No 
Man's  Land,  machine-gun  bullets  sprayed  upon  them, 
and  they  fell  like  grass  to  the  scythe.  Line  after  line  of 
men  followed  them,  and  each  line  crumpled,  and  only 
small  groups  and  single  figures,  seeking  comradeship,  hur- 
ried forward.  German  machine-gunners  were  bayoneted 
as  their  thumbs  were  still  pressed  to  their  triggers.  In 
German  front-line  trenches  at  the  bottom  of  Thiepval 
Wood,  outside  Beaumont  Hamel  and  on  the  edge  of 
Gommecourt  Park,  the  field-gray  men  who  came  out  of 
their  dugouts  fought  fiercely  with  stick-bombs  and  rifles, 
and  our  officers  and  men,  in  places  where  they  had  strength 
enough,  clubbed  them  to  death,  stuck  them  with  bayo- 
nets, and  blew  their  brains  out  with  revolvers  at  short 
range.  Then  those  Enghsh  and  Irish  and  Scottish  troops, 
grievously  weak  because  of  all  the  dead  and  wounded 
behind  them,  struggled  through  to  the  second  German 
line,  from  which  there  came  a  still  fiercer  rattle  of  machine- 


368  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

and  rifle-fire.  Some  of  them  broke  through  that  line,  too, 
and  went  ahead  in  isolated  parties  across  the  wild  crater 
land,  over  chasms  and  ditches  and  fallen  trees,  toward 
the  highest  ground,  which  had  been  their  goal.  Nothing 
was  seen  of  them.  They  disappeared  into  clouds  of 
smoke  and  flame.  Gunner  observers  sav/  rockets  go  up 
in  far  places — our  rockets — showing  that  outposts  had 
penetrated  into  the  German  lines.  Runners  came  back 
— survivors  of  many  predecessors  who  had  fallen  on  the 
way — w4th  scribbled  messages  from  company  officers.  One 
came  from  the  Essex  and  King's  Own  of  the  4th  Division, 
at  a  place  called  Pendant  Copse,  southeast  of  Serre. 
**For  God's  sake  send  us  bombs."  It  was  impossible  to 
send  them  bombs.  No  men  could  get  to  them  through 
the  deep  barrage  of  shell-fire  which  was  between  them 
and  our  supporting  troops.     Many  tried  and  died. 

The  Ulster  men  went  forward  toward  Beaumont  Hamel 
with  a  grim  valor  which  was  reckless  of  their  losses. 
Beaumont  Hamel  was  a  German  fortress.  Machine-gun 
fire  raked  every  yard  of  the  Ulster  way.  Hundreds  of 
the  Irish  fell.  I  met  hundreds  of  them  wounded — tall, 
strong,  powerful  men,  from  Queen's  Island  and  Belfast 
factories,  and  Tyneside  Irish  and  Tyneside  Scots. 

**They  gave  us  no  chance,"  said  one  of  them — a  ser- 
geant-major.    "They  just  murdered  us." 

But  bunches  of  them  went  right  into  the  heart  of  the 
German  positions,  and  then  found  behind  them  crowds 
of  Germans  who  had  come  up  out  of  their  tunnels  and 
flung  bombs  at  them.  Only  a  few  came  back  alive  in  the 
darkness. 

Into  Thiepval  Wood  men  of  ours  smashed  their  way 
through  the  German  trenches,  not  counting  those  who 
fell,  and  killing  any  German  who  stood  in  their  way. 
Inside  that  wood  of  dead  trees  and  charred  branches  they 
reformed,  astonished  at  the  fewness  of  their  numbers. 
Germans  coming  up  from  holes  in  the  earth  attacked  them, 
and  they  held-  firm  and  took  two  hundred  prisoners. 
Other  Germans  came  closing  in  like  wolves,  in  packs,  and 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  369 

to  a  German  officer  who  said,  ** Surrender!"  our  men 
shouted,  "No  surrender!"  and  fought  in  Thiepval  Wood 
until  most  were  dead  and  only  a  few  wounded  crawled 
out  to  tell  that  tale. 

The  Londoners  of  the  56th  Division  had  no  luck  at  all. 
Theirs  was  the  worst  luck,  because,  by  a  desperate  courage 
in  assault,  they  did  break,  through  the  German  lines  at 
Gommecourt.  Their  left  was  held  by  the  London  Rifle 
Brigade.  The  Rangers  and  the  Queen  Victoria  Rifles — • 
the  old  "Vies" — formed  their  center.  Their  right  was 
made  up  by  the  London  Scottish,  and  behind  came  the 
Queen's  \\  estminsters  and  the  Kensingtons,  who  were 
to  advance  through  their  comrades  to  a  farther  objective. 
Across  a  wide  No  Man's  Land  they  suflered  from  the 
bursting  of  heavy  crumps,  and  many  fell.  But  they 
escaped  annihilation  by  machine-gun  fire  and  stormed 
through  the  upheaved  earth  into  Gommecourt  Park,  kill- 
ing many  Germans  and  sendmg  back  batches  of  prisoners. 
They  had  done  what  they  had  been  asked  to  do,  and 
started  building  up  barricades  of  earth  and  sand-bags, 
and  then  found  they  were  in  a  death-trap.  There  were 
no  troops  on  their  right  or  left.  They  had  thrust  out  into 
a  salient,  which  presently  the  enemy  saw.  The  German 
gunners,  with  deadly  skill,  boxed  it  round  with  shell-tire, 
so  that  the  Londoners  were  inclosed  by  explosive  walls, 
and  then  very  slowly  and  carefully  drew  a  line  of  bursting 
shells  up  and  down,  up  and  down  that  captured  ground, 
ravaging  its  earth  anew  and  smashing  the  life  that 
crouched  there — London  life. 

I  have  written  elsewhere  (in  The  Battles  of  the  Sommc) 
how  young  officers  and  small  bodies  of  these  London 
men  held  the  barricades  against  German  attacks  while 
others  tried  to  break  a  way  back  through  that  mur- 
derous shell-fire,  and  how  groups  of  lads  who  set  out 
on  that  adventure  to  their  old  lines  were  shattered  so 
that  only  a  few  from  each  group  crawled  back  alive, 
wounded  or  unwounded. 

At  the  end  of  the  day  the  Germans  acted  with  chivalry, 


370  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

which  I  was  not  allowed  to  tell  at  the  time.  The  general 
of  the  London  Division  (Philip  Howell)  told  me  that  the 
enemy  sent  over  a  message  by  a  low-flying  airplane,  pro- 
posing a  truce  while  the  stretcher-bearers  worked,  and 
ofi^ering  the  service  of  their  own  men  in  that  work  of  mercy. 
This  offer  was  accepted  without  reference  to  G.  H.  Q., 
and  German  stretcher-bearers  helped  to  carry  our  wounded 
to  a  point  where  they  could  be  reached. 

Many,  in  spite  of  that,  remained  lying  out  in  No  Man's 
Land,  some  for  three  or  four  days  and  nights.  I  met  one 
man  who  lay  out  there  wounded,  with  a  group  of  comrades 
more  badly  hurt  than  he  was,  until  July  6th.  At  night 
he  crawled  over  to  the  bodies  of  the  dead  and  took  their 
water-bottles  and  "iron"  rations,  and  so  brought  drink 
and  food  to  his  stricken  friends.  Then  at  last  he  made 
his  way  through  roving  shells  to  our  lines  and  even  then 
asked  to  lead  the  stretcher-bearers  who  volunteered  on  a 
search-party  for  his  "pals." 

"Physical  courage  was  very  common  in  the  war,"  said 
a  friend  of  mine  who  saw  nothing  of  war.  "It  is  proved 
that  physical  courage  is  the  commonest  quality  of  man- 
kind, as  moral  courage  is  the  rarest."  But  that  soldier's 
courage  was  spiritual,  and  there  were  many  like  him  in 
the  battles  of  the  Somme  and  in  other  later  battles  as 
tragic  as  those. 

IX 

I  have  told  how,  before  "The  Big  Push,"  as  we  called  the 
beginning  of  these  battles,  little  towns  of  tents  were  built 
under  the  sign  of  the  Red  Cross.  For  a  time  they  were 
inhabited  only  by  medical  officers,  nurses,  and  orderHes, 
busily  getting  ready  for  a  sudden  invasion,  and  spending 
their  surplus  energy,  which  seemed  inexhaustible,  on  the 
decoration  of  their  camps  by  chalk-lined  paths,  red 
crosses  painted  on  canvas  or  built  up  in  red  and  white 
chalk  on  leveled  earth,  and  flowers  planted  outside  the 
tents — all  very  pretty  and  picturesque  in  the  sunshine 
and  the  breezes  over  the  valley  of  the  Somme. 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  371 

On  the  morning  of  battle  the  doctors,  nurses,  and  order- 
lies waited  for  their  patients  and  said,  "Now  we  sha'n't 
be  long!"  They  were  merry  and  bright  with  that  won- 
derful cheerfulness  which  enabled  them  to  face  the  tragedy 
of  mangled  manhood  without  horror,  and  almost,  it 
seemed,  without  pity,  because  it  was  their  work,  and  they 
were  there  to  heal  what  might  be  healed.  It  was  with  a 
rush  that  their  first  cases  came,  and  the  M.  O.'s  whistled 
and  said,  "Ye  gods!  how  many  more?"  Many  more. 
The  tide  did  not  slacken.  It  became  a  spate  brought 
down  by  waves  of  ambulances.  Three  thousand  wounded 
came  to  Daours  on  the  Somme,  three  thousand  to  Corbie, 
thousands  to  Dernancourt,  Heilly,  Puchevillers,  Touten- 
court,  and  many  other  "clearing  stations." 

At  Daours  the  tents  were  filled  to  overflowing,  until 
there  was  no  more  room.  The  wounded  were  laid  down 
on  the  grass  to  wait  their  turn  for  the  surgeon's  knife. 
Some  of  them  crawled  over  to  haycocks  and  covered 
themselves  with  hay  and  went  to  sleep,  as  I  saw  them 
sleeping  there,  like  dead  men.  Here  and  there  shell- 
shocked  boys  sat  weeping  or  moaning,  and  shaking  with 
an  ague.  Most  of  the  wounded  were  quiet  and  did  not 
give  any  groan  or  moan.  The  lightly  wounded  sat  in 
groups,  telling  their  adventures,  cursing  the  German 
machine-gunners.  Young  officers  spoke  in  a  different 
way,  and  with  that  sporting  spirit  which  they  had  learned 
in  public  schools  praised  their  enemy. 

"The  machine-gunners  are  wonderful  fellows — topping. 
Fight  until  they're  killed.     They  gave  us  hell." 

Each  man  among  those  thousands  of  wounded  had 
escaped  death  a  dozen  times  or  more  by  the  merest  flukes 
of  luck.  It  was  this  luck  of  theirs  which  they  hugged 
with  a  kind  of  laughing  excitement. 

"It's  a  marvel  I'm  here!  That  shell  burst  all  round  me. 
Killed  six  of  my  pals,  I've  got  through  with  a  bhghty 
wound.     No  bones  broken.  .  .  .  God!     What  luck!" 

The  death  of  other  men  did  not  grieve  them.  They 
could  not  waste  this  sense  of  luck  in  pity.     The  escape  of 


372  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

their  own  individuality,  this  possession  of  Hfe,  was  a  glori- 
ous thought.     They  were  ahve!    What  luck!    What  luck! 

We  called  the  hospital  at  Corbie  the  "Butcher's  Shop." 
It  was  in  a  pretty  spot  in  that  little  town  with  a  big  church 
whose  tall  white  towers  looked  down  a  broad  sweep  of  the 
Somme,  so  that  for  miles  they  were  a  landmark  behind 
the  battlefields.  Behind  the  lines  during  those  first  bat- 
tles, but  later,  in  1918,  when  the  enemy  came  nearly  to 
the  gates  of  Amiens,  a  stronghold  of  the  Australians,  who 
garrisoned  it  and  sniped  pigeons  for  their  pots  off  the  top 
of  the  towers,  and  took  no  great  notice  of  "whizz-bangs" 
which  broke  through  the  roofs  of  cottages  and  barns.  It 
was  a  safe,  snug  place  in  July  of  '16,  but  that  Butcher's 
Shop  at  a  corner  of  the  square  was  not  a  pretty  spot. 
After  a  visit  there  I  had  to  wipe  cold  sweat  from  my  fore- 
head, and  found  myself  trembling  in  a  queer  way.  It  was 
the  medical  officer — a  colonel — who  called  it  that  name. 
"This  is  our  Butcher's  Shop,"  he  said,  cheerily.  "Come 
and  have  a  look  at  my  cases.  They're  the  worst  possible; 
stomach  wounds,  compound  fractures,  and  all  that.  We 
lop  off  limbs  here  all  da}^  long,  and  all  night.  You've  no 
idea!" 

I  had  no  idea,  but  I  did  not  wish  to  see  its  reality.  The 
M.  O.  could  not  understand  my  reluctance  to  see  his  show. 
He  put  it  down  to  my  desire  to  save  his  time — and  ex- 
plained that  he  was  going  the  rounds  and  would  take  it 
as  a  favor  if  I  would  walk  with  him.  I  yielded  weakly, 
and  cursed  myself  for  not  taking  to  flight.  Yet,  I  argued, 
what  men  are  brave  enough  to  suffer  I  ought  to  have  the 
courage  to  see.  ...  I  saw  and  sickened. 

These  were  the  victims  of  "Victory"  and  the  red  fruit 
of  war's  harvest-fields.  A  new  batch  of  "cases"  had  just 
arrived.  More  were  being  brought  in  on  stretchers. 
They  were  laid  down  in  rows  on  the  floor-boards.  The 
colonel  bent  down  to  some  of  them  and  drew  their  blankets 
back,  and  now  and  then  felt  a  man's  pulse.  Most  of 
them  were  unconscious,  breathing  with  the  hard  snuffte 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  373 

of  dying  men.  Their  skin  was  already  darkening  to  the 
death-tint,  which  is  not  white.  They  were  all  plastered 
with  a  gray  clay  and  this  mud  on  their  faces  was,  in  some 
cases,  mixed  with  thick  clots  of  blood,  making  a  hard 
incrustation  from  scalp  to  chin. 

"That  fellow  won't  last  long,"  said  the  M.  0.,  rising 
from  a  stretcher.  "Hardly  a  heart-beat  left  in  him. 
Sure  to  die  on  the  operating-table  if  he  gets  as  far  as  that. 
.  .  .  Step  back  against  the  wall  a  minute,  will  you?" 

We  flattened  ourselves  against  the  passage  wall  while 
ambulance  -  men  brought  in  a  line  of  stretchers.  No 
sound  came  from  most  of  those  bundles  under  the  blankets, 
but  from  one  came  a  long,  agonizing  wail,  the  cry  of  an 
animal  in  torture. 

"Come  through  the  wards,"  said  the  colonel.  "They're 
pretty  bright,  though  we  could  do  with  more  space  and 
Hght." 

In  one  long,  narrow  room  there  were  about  thirty  beds, 
and  in  each  bed  lay  a  young  British  soldier,  or  part  of  a 
young  British  soldier.  There  was  not  much  left  of  one 
of  them.  Both  his  legs  had  been  amputated  to  the  thigh, 
and  both  his  arms  to  the  shoulder-blades. 

"Remarkable  man,  that,"  said  the  colonel.  "Simply 
refuses  to  die.  His  vitality  is  so  tremendous  that  it  is 
putting  up  a  terrific  fight  against  mortality.  .  .  .  There's 
another  case  of  the  same  kind;  one  leg  gone  and  the  other 
going,  and  one  arm.  Deliberate  refusal  to  give  in. 
'You're  not  going  to  kill  me,  doctor,'  he  said.  *I'm  going 
to  stick  it  through.'     What  spirit,  eh?" 

I  spoke  to  that  man.  He  was  quite  conscious,  with 
bright  eyes.  His  right  leg  was  uncovered,  and  supported 
on  a  board  hung  from  the  ceiling.  Its  flesh  was  like  that 
of  a  chicken  badly  carved — white,  flabby,  and  in  tatters. 
He  thought  I  was  a  surgeon,  and  spoke  to  me  pleadingly: 

"I  guess  you  can  save  that  leg,  sir.  It's  doing  fine.  I 
should  hate  to  lose  it." 

I  murmured  something  about  a  chance  for  it,  and  the 
M.  O.  broke  in  cheerfully. 


374  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

"You  won't  lose  it  if  I  can  help  it.     How's  your  pulse? 

.  .  Oh,  not  bad.  Keep  cheerful  and  we'll  pull  you 
through." 

The  man  smiled  gallantly. 

"Bound  to  come  off,"  said  the  doctor  as  we  passed  to 
another  bed.  "Gas  gangrene.  That's  the  thing  that 
<loes  us  down." 

In  bed  after  bed  I  saw  men  of  ours,  very  young  men, 
who  had  been  lopped  of  limbs  a  few  hours  ago  or  a  few 
minutes,  some  of  them  unconscious,  some  of  them  strangely 
and  terribly  conscious,  with  a  look  in  their  eyes  as  though 
staring  at  the  death  which  sat  near  to  them,  and  edged 
nearer. 

"Yes,"  said  the  M.  O.,  "they  look  bad,  some  of 
'em,  but  youth  is  on  their  side.  I  dare  say  seventy- 
five  per  cent,  will  get  through.  If  it  wasn't  for  gas 
gangrene — " 

He  jerked  his  head  to  a  boy  sitting  up  in  bed,  smiUng 
at  the  nurse  who  felt  his  pulse. 

"Looks  fairly  fit  after  the  knife,  doesn't  he?  But 
we  shall  have  to  cut  higher  up.  The  gas  again.  I'm 
afraid  he'll  be  dead  before  to-morrow.  Come  into  the 
operating-theater.     It's  very  well  equipped." 

I  refused  that  invitation.  I  walked  stiffly  out  of  the 
Butcher's  Shop  of  Corbie  past  the  man  who  had  lost  both 
arms  and  both  legs,  that  vital  trunk,  past  rows  of  men 
lying  under  blankets,  past  a  stench  of  mud  and  blood  and 
anesthetics,  to  the  fresh  air  of  the  gateway,  where  a 
column  of  ambulances  had  just  arrived  with  a  new  harvest 
from  the  fields  of  the  Somme. 

"Come  in  again,  any  time!"  shouted  out  the  cheery 
colonel,  waving  his  hand. 

I  never  went  again,  though  I  saw  many  other  Butcher's 
Shops  in  the  years  that  followed,  where  there  was  a  great 
carving  of  human  flesh  which  was  of  our  boyhood,  while 
the  old  men  directed  their  sacrifice,  and  the  profiteers 
grew  rich,  and  the  fires  of  hate  were  stoked  up  at  patriotic 
banquets  and  in  editorial  chairs. 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  375 


The  failure  on  the  left  hardly  balanced  by  the  partial 
success  on  the  right  caused  a  sudden  pause  in  the  opera- 
tions, camouflaged  by  small  attacks  on  minor  positions 
around  and  above  Fricourt  and  Mametz.  The  Lincolns 
and  others  went  over  to  Fricourt  Wood  and  routed  out 
German  machine-gunners.  The  West  Yorks  attacked  the 
sunken  road  at  Fricourt.  The  Dorsets,  Manchesters, 
Highland  Light  Infantry,  Lancashire  FusiHers,  and  Bor- 
derers of  the  3  2d  Division  were  in  possssion  of  La  Bois- 
selle  and  clearing  out  communication  trenches  to  which 
the  Germans  were  hanging  on  with  desperate  valor.  The 
2ist  Division — Northumberland  Fusiliers,  Durhams, 
Yorkshires — were  making  a  flanking  attack  on  Contal- 
maison,  but  weakened  after  their  heavy  losses  on  the 
first  day  of  battle.  The  fighting  for  a  time  was  local,  in 
small  copses — Lozenge  Wood,  Peak  Wood,  Caterpillar 
Wood,  Acid  Drop  Copse — where  English  and  German 
troops  fought  ferociously  for  yards  of  ground,  hummocks 
of  earth,  ditches. 

G.  H.  Q.  had  been  shocked  by  the  disaster  on  the  left 
and  the  failure  of  all  the  big  hopes  they  had  held  for  a 
break-through  on  both  sides  of  the  German  positions. 
Rumors  came  to  us  that  the  Commander-in-Chief  had 
decided  to  restrict  future  operations  to  minor  actions  for 
strengthening  the  line  and  to  abandon  the  great  ofl^ensive. 
It  was  believed  by  officers  I  met  that  Sir  Henry  Raw- 
linson  was  arguing,  persuading,  in  favor  of  continued 
assaults  on  the  grand  scale. 

Whatever  division  of  opinion  existed  in  the  High  Com- 
mand I  do  not  know;  it  was  visible  to  all  of  us  that  for 
some  days  there  were  uncertainty  of  direction,  hesitation, 
conflicting  orders.  On  July  7th  the  17th  Division,  under 
General  Pilcher,  attacked  Contalmaison,  and  a  whole 
battalion  of  the  Prussian  Guard  hurried  up  from  Valen- 
ciennes and,  thrown  on  to  the  battlefield  without  maps 
or  guidance,  walked  into  the  barrage  which  covered  the 


376  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

advance  of  our  men  and  were  almost  annihilated.  But 
although  some  bodies  of  our  men  entered  Contalmaison, 
in  an  attack  which  I  was  able  to  see,  they  were  smashed 
out  of  it  again  by  storms  of  fire  followed  by  masses  of 
men  who  poured  out  from  Mametz  Wood.  The  Welsh 
were  attacking  Mametz  Wood. 

They  were  handled,  as  Marbot  said  of  his  men  in  a 
Napoleonic  battle,  'Tike  turnips."  BattaUon  command- 
ers received  orders  in  direct  conflict  with  one  another. 
Bodies  of  Welshmen  were  advanced,  and  then  retired, 
and  left  to  lie  nakedly  without  cover,  under  dreadful  fire. 
The  17th  Division,  under  General  Pilcher,  did  not  attack 
at  the  expected  time.  There  was  no  co-ordination  of 
divisions;  no  knowledge  among  battalion  officers  of  the 
strategy  or  tactics  of  a  battle  in  which  their  men  were 
involved. 

"Goodness  knows  what's  happening,"  said  an  officer  I 
met  near  Mametz.  He  had  been  waiting  all  night  and 
half  a  day  with  a  body  of  troops  who  had  expected  to  go 
forward,  and  were  still  hanging  about  under  harassing 
fire. 

On  July  9th  Contalmaison  was  taken.  I  saw  that 
attack  very  clearly,  so  clearly  that  I  could  almost  count 
the  bricks  in  the  old  chateau  set  in  a  Httle  wood,  and  saw 
the  left-hand  tower  knocked  off  by  the  direct  hit  of  a 
fifteen-inch  shell.  At  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  our 
guns  concentrated  on  the  village,  and  under  the  cover  of 
that  fire  our  men  advanced  on  three  sides  of  it,  hemmed 
it  in,  and  captured  it  with  the  garrison  of  the  I22d 
Bavarian  Regiment,  who  had  suffered  the  agonies  of  hell 
inside  its  ruins.  Now  our  men  stayed  in  the  ruins,  and 
this  time  German  shells  smashed  into  the  chateau  and 
the  cottages  and  left  nothing  but  rubbish  heaps  of  brick 
through  which  a  few  days  later  I  went  walking  with  the 
smell  of  death  in  my  nostrils.  Our  men  were  now  being 
shelled  in  that  place. 

Beyond  La  Boisselle,  on  the  left  of  the  Albert-Bapaume 
road,  there  had  been  a  village  called  Ovillers.     It  was  no 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  377 

longer  there.  Our  guns  haa  removed  every  trace  of  it, 
except  as  it  lay  in  heaps  of  pounded  brick.  The  Germans 
had  a  network  of  trenches  about  it,  and  in  their  ditches 
and  their  dugouts  they  fought  like  v/olves.  Our  12th 
Division  was  ordered  to  drive  them  out — a  division  of 
English  county  troops,  including  the  Sussex,  Essex,  Bed- 
fords,  and  Middlesex — and  those  country  boys  of  ours 
fought  their  way  among  communication  trenches,  bur- 
rowed into  tunnels,  crouched  below  hummocks  of  earth 
and  brick,  and  with  bombs  and  bayonets  and  broken 
rifles,  and  boulders  of  stone,  and  German  stick-bombs, 
and  any  weapon  that  would  kill,  gained  yard  by  yard 
over  the  dead  bodies  of  the  enemy,  or  by  the  capture  of 
small  batches  of  cornered  men,  until  after  seventeen  days 
of  this  one  hundred  and  forty  men  of  the  3d  Prussian 
Guard,  the  last  of  their  garrison,  without  food  or  water, 
raised  a  signal  of  surrender,  and  came  out  with  their 
hands  up.  Ovillers  was  a  shambles,  in  a  fight  of  primitive 
earth-men  like  human  beasts.  Yet  our  men  were  not 
beastlike.  They  came  out  from  those  places — if  they 
had  the  luck  to  come  out — apparently  unchanged,  with- 
out any  mark  of  the  beast  on  them,  and  when  they  cleansed 
themselves  of  mud  and  filth,  boiled  the  lice  out  of  their 
shirts,  and  assembled  in  a  village  street  behind  the  lines, 
they  whistled,  laughed,  gossiped,  as  though  nothing  had 
happened  to  their  souls — though  something  had  really 
happened,  as  now  we  know. 

It  was  not  until  July  14th  that  our  High  Command 
ordered  another  general  attack  after  the  local  fighting 
which  had  been  in  progress  since  the  first  day  of  battle. 
Our  field-batteries,  and  some  of  our  "heavies,"  had  moved 
forward  to  places  like  Montauban  and  Contalmaison — 
where  German  shells  came  searching  for  them  all  day 
long — and  new  divisions  had  been  brought  up  to  relieve 
some  of  the  men  who  had  been  fighting  so  hard  and  so 
long.  It  was  to  be  an  attack  on  the  second  German  line 
of  defense  on  the  ridges  by  the  village  of  Bazentin  le  Grand 
and  Bazentin  le  Petit  to  Lono-ueval  on  the  right  and  Del- 


378  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ville  Wood.  I  went  up  in  the  night  to  see  the  bombard- 
ment and  the  beginning  of  the  battle  and  the  swirl  of  its 
backwash,  and  I  remember  now  the  darkness  of  villages 
behind  the  hnes  through  which  our  cars  crawled,  until 
we  reached  the  edge  of  the  battlefields  and  saw  the  sky 
rent  by  incessant  flames  of  gun-fire,  while  red  tongues  of 
flames  leaped  up  from  burning  villages.  Longueval  was 
on  fire,  and  the  two  Bazentins,  and  another  belt  of  land 
in  France,  so  beautiful  to  see,  even  as  I  had  seen  it  first 
between  the  sand-bags  of  our  parapets,  was  being  deliv- 
ered to  the  charcoal-burners. 

I  have  described  that  night  scene  elsewhere,  in  all  its 
deviltry,  but  one  picture  which  I  passed  on  the  way  to 
the  battlefield  could  not  then  be  told.  Yet  it  was  sig- 
nificant of  the  mentality  of  our  High  Command,  as  was 
afterward  pointed  out  derisively  by  Sixte  von  Arnim.  It 
proved  the  strange  unreasoning  optimism  which  still  lin- 
gered in  the  breasts  of  old-fashioned  generals  in  spite  of 
what  had  happened  on  the  left  on  the  first  day  of  July, 
and  their  study  of  trench  maps,  and  their  knowledge  of 
German  machine-guns.  By  an  old  mill-house  called  the 
Moulin  Vivier,  outside  the  village  of  Meaulte,  were  masses 
of  cavalry — Indian  cavalry  and  Dragoons — drawn  up 
densely  to  leave  a  narrow  passageway  for  field-guns  and 
horse-transport  moving  through  the  village,  which  was  in 
utter  darkness.  The  Indians  sat  like  statues  on  their 
horses,  motionless,  dead  silent.  Now  and  again  there  was 
a  jangle  of  bits.  Here  and  there  a  British  soldier  lit  a 
cigarette  and  for  a  second  the  little  flame  of  his  match 
revealed  a  bronzed  face  or  glinted  on  steel  helmets. 

Cavalry!  ...  So  even  now  there  was  a  serious  purpose 
behind  the  joke  of  English  soldiers  who  had  gone  forward 
on  the  first  day,  shouting,  "This  way  to  the  gap!"  and 
in  the  conversation  of  some  of  those  who  actually  did  ride 
through  Bazentin  that  day. 

A  troop  or  two  made  their  way  over  the  cratered  ground 
and  skirted  Delville  Wood;  the  Dragoon  Guards  charged 
a  machine-gun  in   a  cornfield,   and   killed   the   gunners. 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  379 

Germans  rounded  up  by  them  clung  to  their  stirrup 
leathers  crying:  "Pity!  Pity!"  The  Indians  lowered  their 
lances,  but  took  prisoners  to  show  their  chivalry.  But  it 
was  nothing  more  than  a  heau  geste.  It  was  as  futile  and 
absurd  as  Don  Quixote's  charge  of  the  windmill.  They 
were  brought  to  a  dead  halt  by  the  nature  of  the  ground 
and  machine-gun  fire  which  killed  their  horses,  and  lay 
out  that  night  with  German  shells  searching  for  their 
bodies. 

One  of  the  most  disappointed  men  in  the  army  was  on 
General  Haldane's  staff.  He  was  an  old  cavalry  officer, 
and  this  major  of  the  old,  old  school  (belonging  in  spirit 
to  the  time  of  Charles  Lever)  was  excited  by  the  thought 
that  there  was  to  be  a  cavalry  adventure.  He  was  one 
of  those  who  swore  that  if  he  had  his  chance  he  would 
*'ride  into  the  blue."  It  was  the  chance  he  wanted  and 
he  nursed  his  way  to  it  by  deUcate  attentions  to  General 
Haldane.  The  general's  bed  was  not  so  comfortable  as 
his.  He  changed  places.  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  put 
a  bunch  of  flowers  on  the  general's  table  in  his  dugout. 

"You  seem  very  attentive  to  me,  major,"  said  the 
general,  smelling  a  rat. 

Then  the  major  blurted  out  his  desire.  Could  he  lead 
a  squadron  round  Delville  Wood.!*  Could  he  take  that 
ride  into  the  blue?     He  would  give  his  soul  to  do  it. 

"Get  on  with  your  job,"  said  General  Haldane. 

That  ride  into  the  blue  did  not  encourage  the  cavalry 
to  the  belief  that  they  would  be  of  real  value  in  a  warfare 
of  trench  Hues  and  barbed  wire,  but  for  a  long  time  later 
they  were  kept  moving  backward  and  forward  between 
the  edge  of  the  battlefields  and  the  back  areas,  to  the 
great  incumbrance  of  the  roads,  until  they  were  "guyed" 
by  the  infantry,  and  irritable,  so  their  officers  told  me,  to 
the  verge  of  mutiny.  Their  irritability  was  cured  by  dis- 
mounting them  for  a  turn  in  the  trenches,  and  I  came 
across  the  Household  Cavalry  digging  by  the  Coniston 
Steps,  this  side  of  Thiepval,  and  cursing  their  spade-work. 

In  this  book  I  will  not  tell  again  the  narrative  of  that 


38o  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

fighting  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1916,  which  I  have 
written  with  many  details  of  each  day's  scene  in  my  col- 
lected despatches  called  The  Battles  of  the  Somme.  There 
is  little  that  I  can  add  to  those  word-pictures  which  I 
wrote  day  by  day,  after  haunting  experiences  amid  the 
ruin  of  those  fields,  except  a  summing-up  of  their  effect 
upon  the  mentahty  of  our  men,  and  upon  the  Germans 
who  were  in  the  same  "blood-bath,"  as  they  called  it, 
and  a  closer  analysis  of  the  direction  and  mechanism  of 
our  military  machine. 

Looking  back  upon  those  battles  in  the  light  of  knowl- 
edge gained  in  the  years  that  followed,  it  seems  clear  that 
our  High  Command  was  too  prodigal  in  its  expenditure 
of  life  in  small  sectional  battles,  and  that  the  army  corps 
and  divisional  staffs  had  not  established  an  efficient  sys- 
tem of  communication  with  the  fighting  units  under  their 
control.  It  seemed  to  an  outsider  like  myself  that  a  num- 
ber of  separate  battles  were  being  fought  without  reference 
to  one  another  in  different  parts  of  the  field.  It  seemed  as 
though  our  generals,  after  conferring  with  one  another 
over  telephones,  said,  "All  right,  tell  So-and-so  to  have  a 
go  at  Thiepval,"  or,  "To-day  we  will  send  such-and-such 
a  division  to  capture  Delville  Wood,"  or,  "We  must  get 
that  line  of  trenches  outside  Bazentin."  Orders  were 
drawn  up  on  the  basis  of  that  decision  and  passed  down 
to  brigades,  who  read  them  as  their  sentence  of  death, 
and  obeyed  with  or  without  protest,  and  sent  three  or  four 
battalions  to  assault  a  place  which  was  covered  by  German 
batteries  round  an  arc  of  twenty  miles,  ready  to  open  out 
a  tempest  of  fire  directly  a  rocket  rose  from  their  infantry, 
and  to  tear  up  the  woods  and  earth  in  that  neighborhood 
if  our  men  gained  ground.  If  the  whole  battle-line  moved 
forward  the  German  fire  would  have  been  dispersed,  but 
in  these  separate  attacks  on  places  like  Trones  Wood  and 
Delville  Wood,  and  later  on  High  Wood,  it  was  a  vast 
concentration  of  explosives  which  plowed  up  our  men. 

So  it  was  that  Delville  Wood  was  captured  and  lost 
several  times  and  became  "Devil's"  Wood  to  men  who 


PSYCHOLOCjY  on  the  SOMME  381 

lay  there  under  the  crash  and  fury  of  massed  gun-fire 
until  a  wretched  remnant  of  what  had  been  a  glorious 
brigade  of  youth  crawled  out  stricken  and  bleeding  when 
relieved  by  another  brigade  ordered  to  take  their  turn  in 
that  devil's  caldron,  or  to  recapture  it  when  German 
bombing-parties  and  machine-gunners  had  followed  in 
the  wake  of  fire,  and  had  crouched  again  among  the  fallen 
trees,  and  in  the  shell-craters  and  ditches,  with  our  dead 
and  their  dead  to  keep  them  company.  In  Delville  Wood 
the  South  African  Brigade  of  the  9th  Division  was  cut  to 
pieces,  and  I  saw  the  survivors  come  out  with  few  officers 
to  lead  them. 

In  Trones  Wood,  in  Bernafay  Wood,  in  Mametz  Wood, 
there  had  been  great  slaughter  of  English  troops  and 
Welsh.  The  i8th  Division  and  the  38th  suffered  horri- 
bly. In  Delville  Wood  many  battalions  were  slashed  to 
pieces  before  these  South  Africans.  And  after  that  came 
High  Wood.  ...  All  that  was  left  of  High  Wood  in  the 
autumn  of  1916  was  a  thin  row  of  branchless  trees,  but 
in  July  and  August  there  were  still  glades  under  heavy 
foliage,  until  the  branches  were  lopped  off  and  the  leaves 
scattered  by  our  incessant  fire.  It  was  an  important 
position,  vital  for  the  enemy's  defense,  and  our  attack 
on  the  right  flank  of  the  Pozieres  Ridge,  above  Bazentin 
and  Delville  Wood,  giving  on  the  reverse  slope  a  fine 
observation  of  the  enemy's  lines  above  Martinpuich  and 
Courcellette  away  to  Bapaume.  For  that  reason  the 
Germans  were  ordered  to  hold  it  at  all  costs,  and  many 
German  batteries  had  registered  on  it  to  blast  our  men 
out  if  they  gained  a  foothold  on  our  side  of  the  slope  or 
theirs. 

So  High  Wood  became  another  hell,  on  a  day  of  great 
battle — September  14,  1916 — when  for  the  first  time 
tanks  were  used,  demoralizing  the  enemy  in  certain 
places,  though  they  were  too  few  in  number  to  strike  a 
paralyzing  blow.  The  Londoners  gained  part  of  High 
Wood  at  frightful  cost  and  then  were  blown  out  of  it. 
Other  divisions  followed  them  and  found  the  wood  stuffed 


382  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

with  machine-guns  which  they  had  to  capture  through 
hurricanes  of  bullets  before  they  crouched  in  craters  amid 
dead  Germans  and  dead  Enghsh,  and  then  were  blown 
out  like  the  Londoners,  under  shell-fire,  in  which  no 
human  life  could  stay  for  long. 

The  7th  Division  was  cut  up  there.  The  33d  Division 
lost  six  thousand  men  in  an  advance  against  uncut  wire 
in  the  wood,  which  they  were  told  was  already  captured. 

Hundreds  of  men  were  vomiting  from  the  effect  of 
gas-shells,  choking  and  blinded.  Behind,  the  transport 
wagons  and  horses  were  smashed  to  bits. 

The  divisional  staffs  were  often  ignorant  of  what  was 
happening  to  the  fighting-men  when  the  attack  was 
launched.  Light  signals,  rockets,  heliographing,  were  of 
small  avail  through  the  dust-  and  smoke-clouds.  For- 
ward observing  officers  crouching  behind  parapets,  as  I 
often  saw  them,  and  sometimes  stood  with  them,  watched 
fires  burning,  red  rockets  and  green,  gusts  of  flame,  and 
bursting  shells,  and  were  doubtful  what  to  make  of  it  all. 
Telephone  wires  trailed  across  the  ground  for  miles,  were 
cut  into  short  lengths  by  shrapnel  and  high  explosive. 
Accidents  happened  as  part  of  the  inevitable  blunders  of 
war.     It  was  all  a  vast  tangle  and  complexity  of  strife. 

On  July  17th  I  stood  in  a  tent  by  a  staff-officer  who  was 
directing  a  group  of  heavy  guns  supporting  the  3d  Divi- 
sion. He  was  tired,  as  I  could  see  by  the  black  lines  under 
his  eyes  and  tightly  drawn  lips.  On  a  camp-table  in 
front  of  him,  upon  which  he  leaned  his  elbows,  there  was 
a  telephone  apparatus,  and  the  little  bell  kept  ringing  as 
we  talked.  Now  and  then  a  shell  burst  in  the  field  out- 
side the  tent,  and  he  raised  his  head  and  said:  "They 
keep  crumping  about  here,  Hope  they  won't  tear  this 
tent  to  ribbons.  .  .  .  That  sounds  like  a  gas-shell." 

Then  he  turned  to  the  telephone  again  and  Hstened  to 
some  voice  speaking. 

"Yes,  I  can  hear  you.  Yes,  go  on.  *Our  men  seen 
leaving  High  Wood.'  Yes.  'Shelled  by  our  artillery.' 
Are  you  sure  of  that?     I  say,  are  you  sure  they  were  our 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  383 

men?  Another  message.  Well,  carry  on.  *Men  digging 
on  road  from  High  Wood  southeast  to  Longueval.'  Yes, 
I've  got  that.  'They  are  our  men  and  not  Boches.' 
Oh,  hell ! .  .  .  Get  off  the  line.  Get  off  the  line,  can't  you .? 
.  .  .  *Our  men  and  not  Bodies.'  Yes,  I  have  that. 
*Heavily  shelled  by  our  guns.'" 

The  staff-officer  tapped  on  the  table  with  a  lead-pencil 
a  tattoo,  while  his  forehead  puckered.  Then  he  spoke 
into  the  telephone  again. 

"Are  you  there,  'Heavies'  ? .  .  .  Well,  don't  disturb  those 
fellows  for  half  an  hour.  After  that  I  will  give  you  new 
orders.     Try  and  confirm  if  they  are  our  men." 

He  rang  off  and  turned  to  me, 

**That's  the  trouble.  Looks  as  if  we  had  been  pound- 
ing our  own  men  like  hell.  Some  damn  fool  reports 
'Boches.'  Gives  the  reference  number.  Asks  for  the 
'Heavies'.  Then  some  other  fellow  says:  'Not  Boches.  For 
God's  sake  cease  fire!'     How  is  one  to  tell?" 

I  could  not  answer  that  question,  but  I  hated  the  idea 
of  our  men  sent  forward  to  capture  a  road  or  a  trench  or 
a  wood  and  then  "pounded"  by  our  guns.  They  had 
enough  pounding  from  the  enemy's  guns.  There  seemed 
a  missing  link  in  the  system  somewhere.  Probably  it 
was  quite  inevitable. 

Over  and  over  again  the  wounded  swore  to  God  that 
they  had  been  shelled  by  our  own  guns.  The  Londoners 
said  so  from  High  Wood.  The  Australians  said  so  from 
Mouquet  Farm.  The  Scots  said  so  from  Longueval! 
They  said:  "Why  the  hell  do  we  get  murdered  by  British 
gunners?  What's  the  good  of  fighting  if  we're  slaugh- 
tered by  our  own  side?" 

In  some  cases  they  were  mistaken.  It  was  enfilade 
fire  from  German  batteries.  But  often  it  happened  ac- 
cording to  the  way  of  that  telephone  conversation  in  the 
tent  by  Bronfay  Farm. 

The  difference  between  British  soldiers  and  German 
soldiers  crawling  over  shell-craters  or  crouching  below  the 
banks  of  a  sunken  road  was  no  more  than  the  difference 


384  NOV/  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

between  two  tribes  of  ants.  Our  flying  scouts,  however 
low  they  flew,  risking  the  Archies  and  machine-gun  bul- 
lets, often  mistook  khaki  for  field  gray,  and  came  back 
with  false  reports  which  led  to  tragedy. 


XI 

People  who  read  my  war  despatches  will  remember  my 
first  descriptions  of  the  tanks  and  those  of  other  corre- 
spondents. They  caused  a  sensation,  a  sense  of  excite- 
ment, laughter  which  shook  the  nation  because  of  the 
comicality,  the  grotesque  surprise,  the  possibility  of 
quicker  victory,  which  caught  hold  of  the  imagination  of 
people  who  heard  for  the  first  time  of  those  new  engines 
of  war,  so  beastlike  in  appearance  and  performance. 
The  vagueness  of  our  descriptions  was  due  to  the  censor- 
ship, which  forbade,  wisely  enough,  any  technical  and 
exact  definition,  so  that  we  had  to  compare  them  to  giant 
toads,  mammoths,  and  prehistoric  animals  of  all  kinds. 
Our  accounts  did,  however,  reproduce  the  psychological 
effect  of  the  tanks  upon  the  British  troops  when  these 
engines  appeared  for  the  first  time  to  their  astonished 
gaze  on  September  13th.  Our  soldiers  roared  with  laugh- 
ter, as  I  did,  when  they  saw  them  lolloping  up  the  roads. 
On  the  morning  of  the  great  battle  of  September  15th 
the  presence  of  the  tanks  going  into  action  excited  all 
the  troops  along  the  front  with  a  sense  of  comical  relief 
in  the  midst  of  the  grim  and  deadly  business  of  attack. 
Men  followed  them,  laughing  and  cheering.  There  was  a 
wonderful  thrill  in  the  airman's  message,  *'Tank  walking 
up  the  High  Street  of  Flers  with  the  British  army  cheer- 
ing behind."  Wounded  boys  whom  I  met  that  morning 
grinned  in  spite  of  their  wounds  at  our  first  word  about 
the  tanks.  "Crikey!"  said  a  cockney  lad  of  the  47th 
Division.  "I  can't  help  laughing  every  time  I  think  of 
them  tanks.  I  saw  them  stamping  down  German 
machine-guns  as  though  they  were  wasps'  nests."  The 
adventures  of  Creme  de  Menthe,  Cordon  Rouge,  and  the 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  385 

Byng  Boys,  on  both  sides  of  the  Bapaume  road,  when 
they  smashed  down  barbed  wire,  climbed  over  trenches, 
sat  on  German  redoubts,  and  received  the  surrender  of 
German  prisoners  who  held  their  hands  up  to  these  mon- 
sters and  cried,  '^ Kamerad/"  were  Hke  fairy-tales  of  war 
by  H.  G.  Wells. 

Yet  their  romance  had  a  sharp  edge  of  reality  as  I  saw 
in  those  battles  of  the  Somme,  and  afterward,  more  griev- 
ously, in  the  Cambrai  salient  and  Flanders,  when  the  tanks 
were  put  out  of  action  by  direct  hits  of  field-guns  and 
nothing  of  humankind  remained  in  them  but  the  charred 
bones  of  their  gallant  crews. 

Before  the  battle  in  September  of  '16  I  talked  with  the 
pilots  of  the  first  tanks,  and  although  they  were  con- 
vinced of  the  value  of  these  new  engines  of  war  and  were 
out  to  prove  it,  they  did  not  disguise  from  me  nor  from 
their  own  souls  that  they  v/ere  going  forth  upon  a  perilous 
adventure  with  the  odds  of  luck  against  them.  I  remem- 
ber one  young  pilot — a  tiny  fellow  Hke  a  jockey,  who 
took  me  on  one  side  and  said,  "I  want  you  to  do  me  a 
favor,"  and  then  scribbled  down  his  mother's  address 
and  asked  me  to  write  to  her  if  ''anything"  happened 
to  him. 

He  and  other  tank  officers  were  anxious.  They  had 
not  complete  confidence  in  the  steering  and  control  of 
their  engines.  It  was  a  difficult  and  clumsy  kind  of  gear, 
which  was  apt  to  break  down  at  a  critical  moment,  as  I 
saw  when  I  rode  in  one  on  their  field  of  maneuver.  These 
first  tanks  were  only  experimental,  and  the  tail  arrange- 
ment was  very  weak.  Worse  than  all  mechanical  troubles 
was  the  short-sighted  policy  of  some  authority  at  G.  H.  Q., 
who  had  insisted  upon  A.  S.  C.  drivers  being  put  to  this 
job  a  few  days  before  the  battle,  without  proper  training. 

"It  is  mad  and  murderous,"  said  one  of  the  officers. 
"These  fellows  may  have  pluck,  all  right — I  don't  doubt 
it — but  they  don't  know  their  engines,  nor  the  double 
steering  trick,  and  they  have  never  been  under  shell-fire. 
It  is  asking  for  trouble." 


386  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

As  it  turned  out,  the  A.  S.  C.  drivers  proved  their 
pluck,  for  the  most  part,  splendidly,  but  many  tanks 
broke  down  before  they  reached  the  enemy's  lines,  and 
in  that  action  and  later  battles  there  were  times  when 
they  bitterly  disappointed  the  infantry  commanders  and 
the  troops. 

Individual  tanks,  commanded  by  gallant  young  ojfficers 
and  served  by  brave  crews,  did  astounding  feats,  and 
some  of  these  men  came  back  dazed  and  deaf  and  dumb, 
after  forty  hours  or  more  of  fighting  and  maneuvering 
within  steel  walls,  intensely  hot,  filled  with  the  fumes  of 
their  engines,  jolted  and  banged  about  over  rough  ground, 
and  steering  an  uncertain  course,  after  the  loss  of  their 
"tails,"  which  had  snapped  at  the  spine.  But  there  had 
not  been  anything  like  enough  tanks  to  secure  an  anni- 
hilating surprise  over  the  enemy  as  afterward  was  attained 
in  the  first  battle  of  Cambrai;  and  the  troops  who  had 
been  buoyed  up  with  the  hope  that  at  last  the  machine- 
gun  evil  was  going  to  be  scotched  were  disillusioned  and 
dejected  when  they  saw  tanks  ditched  behind  the  lines 
or  nowhere  in  sight  when  once  again  they  had  to  trudge 
forward  under  the  flail  of  machine-gun  bullets  fromxearth- 
work  redoubts.  It  was  a  failure  in  generalship  to  give 
away  our  secret  before  it  could  be  made  effective. 

I  remember  sitting  in  a  mess  of  the  Gordons  in  the 
village  of  Franvillers  along  the  Albert  road,  and  listening 
to  a  long  monologue  by  a  Gordon  officer  on  the  future  of 
the  tanks.  He  was  a  dreamer  and  visionary,  and  his 
fellow-officers  laughed  at  him. 

"A  few  tanks  are  no  good,"  he  said.  "Forty  or  fifty 
tanks  are  no  good  on  a  modern  battle-front.  We  want 
hundreds  of  tanks,  brought  up  secretly,  fed  with  ammuni- 
tion by  tank  carriers,  bringing  up  field-guns  and  going 
into  action  without  any  preliminary  barrage.  They  can 
smash  through  the  enemy's  wire  and  get  over  his  trenches 
before  he  is  aware  that  an  attack  has  been  organized. 
Up  to  now  all  our  offensives  have  been  futile  because  of 
our  preliminary  advertisement  by  prolonged  bombard- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  387 

merit.     The  tanks  can  bring  back  surprise  to  modern  war- 
fare, but  we  must  have  hundreds  of  them." 

Prolonged  laughter  greeted  this  speech.  But  the  Celtic 
dreamer  did  not  smile.  He  was  staring  into  the  future. 
.  .  .  And  what  he  saw  was  true,  though  he  did  not  live  to 
see  it,  for  in  the  Cambrai  battle  of  November  nth  the 
tanks  did  advance  in  hundreds,  and  gained  an  enormous 
surprise  over  the  enemy,  and  led  the  way  to  a  striking 
victory,  which  turned  to  tragedy  because  of  risks  too 
lightly  taken. 

XII 

One  branch  of  our  military  machine  developed  with 
astonishing  rapidity  and  skill  during  those  Somme  battles. 
The  young  gentlemen  of  the  Air  Force  went  ''all  out"  for 
victory,  and  were  reckless  in  audacity.  How  far  they 
acted  under  orders  and  against  their  own  judgment  of 
what  was  sensible  and  sound  in  fighting-risks  I  do  not 
know.  General  Trenchard,  their  supreme  chief,  believed 
in  an  aggressive  policy  at  all  costs,  and  was  a  Napoleon 
in  this  war  of  the  skies,  intolerant  of  timidity,  not  squeam- 
ish of  heavy  losses  if  the  balance  were  tipped  against  the 
enemy.  Some  young  flying-men  complained  to  me  bit- 
terly that  they  were  expected  to  fly  or  die  over  the  Ger- 
man lines,  whatever  the  weather  or  whatever  the  risks. 
Many  of  them,  after  repeated  escapes  from  anti-aircraft 
shells  and  hostile  craft,  lost  their  nerve,  shirked  another 
journey,  found  themselves  crying  in  their  tents,  and  were 
sent  back  home  for  a  spell  by  squadron  commanders,  with 
quick  observation  for  the  breaking-point;  or  made  a  few 
more  flights  and  fell  to  earth  like  broken  birds. 

Sooner  or  later,  apart  from  rare  cases,  every  man  was 
found  to  lose  his  nerve,  unless  he  lost  his  Hfe  first.     That 
was   a   physical   and   mental  law.     But  until  that  time* 
these  flying-men  were  the  knights-errant  of  the  war,  and 
most  of  them  did  not  need  any  driving  to  the  risks  they  1 
took  with  boyish  recklessness. 

They  were  mostly  boys — babes,  as  they  seemed  to  me, 


388  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

when  I  saw  them  in  their  tents  or  dismounting  from  their 
machines.  On  "dud"  days,  when  there  was  no  visibihty 
at  all,  they  spent  their  leisure  hours  joy-riding  to  Amiens 
or  some  other  town  where  they  could  have  a  "binge." 
They  drank  many  cocktails  and  roared  with  laughter  over 
bottles  of  cheap  champagne,  and  flirted  with  any  girl 
who  happened  to  come  within  their  orbit.  If  not  allowed 
beyond  their  tents,  they  sulked  like  baby  Achilles,  reading 
novelettes,  with  their  knees  hunched  up,  playing  the 
gramophone,  and  ragging  each  other. 

There  was  one  child  so  young  that  his  squadron  leader 
would  not  let  him  go  out  across  the  battle-lines  to  chal- 
lenge any  German  scout  in  the  clouds  or  do  any  of  the 
fancy  "stunts"  that  were  part  of  the  next  day's  program. 
He  went  to  bed  sulkily,  and  then  came  back  again,  in  his 
pajamas,  with  rumpled  hair. 

"Look  here,  sir,"  he  said.  "Can't  I  go.f*  I've  got  my 
wings.     It's  perfectly  rotten  being  left  behind." 

The  squadron  commander,  who  told  me  of  the  tale, 
yielded. 

"All  right.     Only  don't  do  any  fool  tricks." 

Next  morning  the  boy  flew  ofl\  played  a  lone  hand, 
chased  a  German  scout,  dropped  low  over  the  enemy's 
lines,  machine-gunned  infantry  on  the  march,  scattered 
them,  bombed  a  train,  chased  a  German  motor-car,  and 
after  many  adventures  came  back  alive  and  said,  "I've 
had  a  rare  old  time!" 

On  a  stormy  day,  which  loosened  the  tent  poles  and 
slapped  the  wet  canvas,  I  sat  in  a  mess  with  a  group  of 
flying-oflRccrs,  drinking  tea  out  of  a  tin  mug.  One  boy, 
the  youngest  of  them,  had  just  brought  down  his  first 
"Hun."  Lie  told  me  the  tale  of  it  with  many  details,  his 
eyes  alight  as  he  described  the  fight.  They  had  maneu- 
vered round  each  other  for  a  long  time.  Then  he  shot 
his  man  en  passant.  The  machine  crashed  on  our  side 
of  the  lines.  He  had  taken  ofl  the  iron  crosses  on  the 
wings,  and  a  bit  of  the  propeller,  as  mementoes.  He 
showed  me  these  things  (while  the  squadron  commander, 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  'IHE  SOMME  389 

who  had  brought  down  twenty-four  Germans,  winked  at 
me)  and  told  me  he  was  going  to  send  them  home  to  hang 
beside  his  college  trophies.  ...  I  guessed  he  was  less  than 
nineteen  years  old.  Such  a  kid!  ...  A  few  days  later, 
when  I  went  to  the  tent  again,  I  asked  about  him. 

"How's  that  boy  who  brought  down  his  first  'Hun'.f"' 

The  squadron  commander  said: 

"Didn't  you  hear.''  He's  gone  west.  Brought  down 
in  a  dog-fight.  He  had  a  chance  of  escape,  but  went  back 
to  rescue  a  pal ...  a  nice  boy." 

They  became  fatalists  after  a  few  fights,  and  believed 
in  their  luck,  or  their  mascots  —  teddy-bears,  a  bullet 
that  had  missed  them,  china  dolls,  a  girl's  lock  of  hair, 
a  silver  ring.  Yet  at  the  back  of  their  brains,  most  of 
them,  I  fancy,  knew  that  it  was  only  a  question  of  time 
before  they  "went  west,"  and  with  that  subconscious 
thought  they  crowded  in  all  life  intensely  in  the  hours 
that  were  given  to  them,  seized  all  chance  of  laughter,  of 
wine,  of  every  kind  of  pleasure  within  reach,  and  said 
their  prayers  (some  of  them)  with  great  fervor,  between 
one  escape  and  another,  like  young  Paul  Bensher,  who  has 
revealed  his  soul  in  verse,  his  secret  terror,  his  tears,  his 
hatred  of  death,  his  love  of  life,  when  he  went  bombing 
over  Bruges. 

On  the  mornings  of  the  battles  of  the  Somme  I  saw  them 
as  the  heralds  of  a  new  day  of  strife  flying  toward  the 
lines  in  the  first  light  of  dawn.  When  the  sun  rose  its 
rays  touched  their  wings,  made  them  white  like  cabbage 
butterflies,  or  changed  them  to  silver,  all  asparkle.  I 
saw  them  fly  over  the  German  positions,  not  changing 
their  course.  Then  all  about  them  burst  black  puffs  of 
German  shrapnel,  so  that  many  times  I  held  my  breath 
because  they  seemed  in  the  center  of  the  burst.  But 
generally  when  the  cloud  cleared  they  were  flying  again, 
until  they  disappeared  in  the  mists  over  the  enemy's 
country.  There  they  did  deadly  work,  in  single  fights 
with  German  airmen,  or  against  great  odds,  until  they 
had  an  air  space  to  themselves  and  skimmed  the  earth 


390  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

like  albatrosses  in  low  flight,  attacking  machine-gun  nests, 
killing  or  scattering  the  gunners  by  a  burst  of  bullets  from 
their  Lewis  guns,  dropping  bombs  on  German  wagon 
transports,  infantry,  railway  trains  (one  man  cut  a  train 
in  half  and  saw  men  and  horses  falling  out),  and  ammuni- 
tion-dumps, directing  the  fire  of  our  guns  upon  living 
targets,  photographing  new  trenches  and  works,  bombing 
villages  crowded  with  German  troops.  That  they  struck 
terror  into  these  German  troops  was  proved  afterward 
when  we  went  into  Bapaume  and  Peronne  and  many 
villages  from  which  the  enemy  retreated  after  the  battles 
of  the  Somme.  Everyv/here  there  were  signboards  on 
which  was  written  "flieger  Schutz!"  (aircraft  shelter)  or 
German  warnings  of:  "  Keep  to  the  sidewalks.  This  road 
is  constantly  bombed  by  British  airmen." 

They  were  a  new  plague  of  war,  and  did  for  a  time  gain 
a  complete  mastery  of  the  air.  But  later  the  Germans 
learned  the  lesson  of  low  flying  and  night  bombing,  and 
in  1917  and  1918  came  back  in  greater  strength  and  made 
the  nights  horrible  in  camps  behind  the  lines  and  in  vil- 
lages, where  they  killed  many  soldiers  and  more  civilians. 

The  infantry  did  not  beUeve  much  in  our  air  supremacy 
at  any  time,  not  knowing  what  work  was  done  beyond 
their  range  of  vision,  and  seeing  our  machines  crashed  in 
No  Man's  Land,  and  hearing  the  rattle  of  machine-guns 
from  hostile  aircraft  above  their  own  trenches. 

** Those  aviators  of  ours,"  a  general  said  to  me,  "are 
the  biggest  liars  in  the  world.  Cocky  fellows  claiming 
impossible  achievements.  What  proof  can  they  give  of 
their  preposterous  tales?  They  only  go  into  the  air 
service  because  they  haven't  the  pluck  to  serve  in  the 
infantry." 

That  was  prejudice.  The  German  losses  were  proof 
enough  of  our  men's  fighting  skill  and  strength,  and  Ger- 
man prisoners  and  German  letters  confirmed  all  their 
claims.  But  we  were  dishonest  in  our  reckoning  from 
first  to  last,  and  the  British  pubhc  was  hoodwinked  about 
our  losses.     "Three  of  our  machines  are  missing."     "Six 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  '391 

of  our  machines  are  missing."  Yes,  but  what  about  the 
machines  which  crashed  in  No  Man's  Land  and  behind 
our  lines?  They  were  not  missing,  but  destroyed,  and 
the  boys  who  had  flown  in  them  were  dead  or  broken. 

To  the  end  of  the  war  those  aviators  of  ours  searched 
the  air  for  their  adventures,  fought  often  against  over- 
whelming numbers,  killed  the  German  champions  in 
single  combat  or  in  tourneys  in  the  sky,  and  let  down 
tons  of  high  explosives  which  caused  great  death  and 
widespread  destruction;  and  in  this  work  they  died  like 
flies,  and  one  boy's  life— one  of  those  laughing,  fatalistic, 
intensely  living  boys — was  of  no  more  account  in  the 
general  sum  of  slaughter  than  a  summer  midge,  except  as 
one  little  unit  in  the  Armies  of  the  Air. 


XIII 

I  am  not  strong  enough  in  the  science  of  psychology  to 
understand  the  origin  of  laughter  and  to  get  into  touch 
vv'ith  the  mainsprings  of  gaiety.  The  sharp  contrast  be- 
tween normal  ethics  and  an  abnormality  of  action  pro- 
vides a  grotesque  point  of  view  arousing  ironical  mirth. 
It  is  probable  also  that  surroundings  of  enormous  tragedy 
stimulate  the  sense  of  humor  of  the  individual,  so  that 
any  small,  ridiculous  thing  assumes  the  proportion  of 
monstrous  absurdity.  It  is  also  likely — certain,  I  think 
— that  laughter  is  an  escape  from  terror,  a  liberation  of 
the  soul  by  mental  expTostoh,  from  the  prison  walls  of 
despair  and  brooding.  In  the  Decameron  of  Boccaccio  a 
group  of  men  and  women  encompassed  by  plague  retired 
into  seclusion  to  tell  one  another  mirthful  immoralities 
which  stirred  their  laughter.  They  laughed  while  the 
plague  destroyed  society  around  them  and  when  they 
knew  that  its  foul  germs  were  on  the  prowl  for  their  own 
bodies.  ...  So  it  was  in  this  war,  where  in  many  strangei 
places  and  in  many  dreadful  days  there  was  great  laughter.! 
I  think  sometimes  of  a  night  I  spent  with  the  medical 
officers  of  a  tent  hospital  in  the  fields  of  the  Somme  dur- 


392  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ing  those  battles.  With  me  ns  a  guest  went  a  modern 
Falstaff,  a  "ton  of  flesh,"  who  "sweats  to  death  and 
lards  the  lean  earth  as  he  walks  along." 

He  was  a  man  of  many  anecdotes,  drawn  from  the  sinks 
and  stews  of  life,  yet  with  a  sense  of  beauty  lurking  under 
his  coarseness,  and  a  voice  of  fine,  sonorous  tone,  which 
he  managed  with  art  and  a  melting  grace. 

On  the  way  to  the  field  hospital  he  had  taken  more 
than  one  nip  of  whisky.  His  voice  was  well  oiled  when 
he  sang  a  greeting  to  a  medical  major  in  a  florid  burst  of 
melody  from  Italian  opera.  The  major  was  a  little  Irish 
medico  who  had  been  through  the  South  African  War 
and  in  tropical  places,  where  he  had  drunk  fire-water  to 
kill  all  manner  of  microbes.  He  suflTered  abominably 
from  asthma  and  had  had  a  heart-seizure  the  da}'^  before 
our  dinner  at  his  mess,  and  told  us  that  he  would  drop 
down  dead  as  sure  as  fate  between  one  operation  and 
another  on  "the  poor,  bloody  wounded"  who  never  ceased 
to  flow  into  his  tent.  But  he  was  in  a  laughing  mood, 
and  thirsty  for  laughter-making  liquid.  He  had  two 
whiskies  before  the  dinner  began  to  wet  his  whistle.  His 
fellow-officers  were  out  for  an  evening's  joy,  but  nervous 
of  the  colonel,  an  austere  soul  who  sat  at  the  head  of  the 
mess  with  the  look  of  a  man  afraid  that  merriment  might 
reach  outrageous  heights  beyond  his  control.  A  courte- 
ous man  he  was,  and  rather  sad.  His  presence  for  a  time 
acted  as  a  restraint  upon  the  company,  until  all  restraint 
was  broken  by  the  Falstafi'  with  me,  who  told  soul-crash- 
ing stories  to  the  little  Irish  major  across  the  table  and 
sang  love  lyrics  to  the  orderly  who  brought  round  the 
cottage  pie  and  pickles.  There  was  a  tall,  thin  young 
surgeon  who  had  been  carving  up  living  bodies  all  day 
and  many  days,  and  now  listened  to  that  fat  rogue  with 
an  intensitv  of  delight  that  lit  up  his  melancholy  eyes, 
watching  him  gravely  between  gusts  of  deep  laughter, 
which  seemed  to  come  from  his  boots.  There  was  an- 
other young  surgeon,  once  of  Barts',  who  made  himself 
the  cup-server  of  the  fat  knight  and  kept  his  wine  at  the 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  393 

brim,  and  encouraged  liini  to  fresh  audacities  of  anec- 
dotry,  with  a  humorous  glance  at  the  colonel's  troubled 
face.  .  .  .  The  colonel  was  forgotten  after  dinner.  The 
little  Irish  major  took  the  lid  off  the  boiling  pot  of 
mirth.  He  was  entirely  mad,  as  he  assured  us,  be- 
tween dances  of  a  wild  and  primitive  type,  stories  of 
adventure  in  far  lands,  and  spasms  of  asthmatic  cough- 
ing, when  he  beat  his  breast  and  said,  "A  pox  in  my 
bleeding  heart!" 

FalstafF  was  playing  Juliet  to  the  Romeo  of  the  tall 
young  surgeon,  singing  falsetto  like  a  fat  German  angel 
dressed  in  loose-fitting  khaki,  with  his  belt  undone. 
There  w^ere  charades  in  the  tent.  The  boy  from  Barts' 
did  remarkable  imitations  of  a  gamecock  challenging  a 
rival  bird,  of  a  cow  coming  through  a  gate,  of  a  general 
addressing  his  troops  (most  comical  of  all).  Several 
glasses  were  broken.  The  corkscrew  was  disregarded  as 
a  useless  implement,  and  whisky-bottles  were  decapitated 
against  the  tent  poles.  I  remember  vaguely  the  crown- 
ing episode  of  the  evening  when  the  little  major  was 
dancing  the  Irish  jig  with  a  kitchen  chair;  when  Falstaff 
was  singing  the  Prologue  of  Pagliacci  to  the  stupefied 
colonel;  when  the  boy,  once  of  Barts',  was  roaring  Uke 
a  lion  under  the  mess  table,  and  when  the  tall,  melancholy 
surgeon  was  at  the  top  of  the  tent  pole,  scratching  himself 
like  a  gorilla  in  his  native  haunts.  .  .  .  Outside,  the  field 
hospital  was  quiet,  under  a  fleecy  sky  with  a  crescent 
moon.  Through  the  painted  canvas  of  the  tent  city 
candle-light  glowed  with  a  faint  rose-colored  light,  and 
the  Red  Cross  hung  limp  above  the  camp  where  many 
wounded  lay,  waking  or  sleeping,  tossing  in  agony,  dying 
in  unconsciousness.  Far  away  over  the  fields,  rockets 
were  rising  above  the  battle-lines.  The  sky  was  flicker- 
ing with  the  flush  of  gun-fire.  A  red  glare  rose  and  spread 
below  the  clouds  where  some  ammunition-dump  had  been 
exploded.  .  .  .  Old  Falstaff^  fell  asleep  in  the  car  on  the 
way  back  to  our  quarters,  and  I  smiled  at  the  memory  of 
great  laughter  in  the  midst  of  tragedy. 


394  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

XIV 

The  struggle  of  men  from  one  low  ridge  to  another  low 
ridge  in  a  territory  forty  miles  wide  by  more  than  twenty 
miles  deep,  during  live  months  of  fighting,  was  enormous 
in  its  intensity  and  prolongation  of  slaughter,  wounding, 
and  endurance  of  all  hardships  and  terrors  of  war.  As 
an  eye-witness  I  saw  the  full  scope  of  the  bloody  drama. 
I  saw  day  by  day  the  tidal  waves  of  wounded  limping 
back,  until  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men  had 
passed  through  our  casualty  clearing  stations,  and  then 
were  not  finished.  I  went  among  these  men  when  the 
blood  was  wet  on  them,  and  talked  with  hundreds  of 
them,  and  heard  their  individual  narratives  of  escapes 
from  death  until  my  imagination  was  saturated  with  the 
spirit  of  their  conflict  of  body  and  soul.  I  saw  a  green, 
downy  countr^'side,  beautiful  in  its  summer  life,  ravaged 
by  gun-fire  so  that  the  white  chalk  of  its  subsoil  was  flung 
above  the  earth  and  grass  in  a  wide,  sterile  stretch  of 
desolation  pitted  with  shell-craters,  ditched  by  deep 
trenches,  whose  walls  were  hideously  upheaved  by  ex- 
plosive fire,  and  littered  yard  after  yard,  mile  after  mile, 
with  broken  wire,  rifles,  bombs,  unexploded  shells,  rags 
of  uniform,  dead  bodies,  or  bits  of  bodies,  and  all  the  filth 
of  battle.  I  saw  many  villages  flung  into  ruin  or  blown 
clean  ofl'the  map.  I  walked  into  such  villages  as  Contal- 
maison,  Martinpuich,  Le  Sars,  Thilloy,  and  at  last  Ba- 
paume,  when  a  smell  of  burning  and  the  fumes  of  explo- 
sives and  the  stench  of  dead  flesh  rose  up  to  one's  nostrils 
and  one's  very  soul,  when  our  dead  and  German  dead 
lay  about,  and  newly  wounded  came  walking  through 
the  ruins  or  were  carried  shoulder  high  on  stretchers,  and 
consciously  and  subconsciously  the  living,  unwounded 
men  who  went  through  these  places  knew  that  death 
lurked  about  them  and  around  them  and  above  them, 
and  at  any  second  might  make  its  pounce  upon  their  own 
flesh.  I  saw  our  men  going  into  battle  with  strong  bat- 
talions and  coming;  out  of  it  with  weak  battalions.     I  saw 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  395 

them  in  the  midst  of  battle  at  Thiepval,  at  Contalmaison, 
at  Guillemont,  by  Loupart  Wood,  when  they  trudged 
toward  Hnes  of  German  trenches,  bunching  a  Httle  in 
groups,  dodging  shell-bursts,  falling  in  single  figures  or 
in  batches,  and  fighting  over  the  enemy's  parapets.  I 
sat  with  them  in  their  dugouts  before  battle  and  after 
battle,  saw  their  bodies  gathered  up  for  burial,  heard 
their  snuffle  of  death  in  hospital,  sat  by  their  bedside  when 
they  were  sorely  wounded.  So  the  full  tragic  drama  of 
that  long  conflict  on  the  Somme  was  burned  into  my 
brain  and  I  was,  as  it  were,  a  part  of  it,  and  I  am  still 
seared  with  its  remembrance,  and  shall  always  be. 

But  however  deep  the  knowledge  of  tragedy,  a  man 
would  be  a  liar  if  he  refused  to  admit  the  heroism,  the 
gallantry'  of  youth,  even  the  gaiety  of  men  in  these  infer-*i 
nal  months.  Psychology  on  the  Somme  was  not  simple^X 
and  straightforward.  Men  were  afraid,  but  fear  was  not 
their  dominating  emotion,  except  in  the  worst  hours. 
Men  hated  this  fighting,  but  found  excitement  in  it,  often 
exultation,  sometimes  an  intense  stimulus  of  all  their 
senses  and  passions  before  reaction  and  exhaustion.  Men 
became  jibbering  idiots  with  shell-shock,  as  I  saw  some 
of  them,  but  others  rejoiced  when  they  saw  our  shells 
plowing  into  the  enemy's  earthworks,  laughed  at  their  ^ 
own  narrow  escapes  and  at  grotesque  comicalities  of  this  V 
monstrous  deviltn,'.  The  officers  were  proud  of  their 
men,  eager  for  their  honor  and  achievement.  The  men 
themselves  were  in  rivalr}"  with  other  bodies  of  troops, 
and  proud  of  their  own  prowess.  They  were  scornful  of 
all  that  the  enemy  might  do  to  them,  3'et  acknowledged 
his  courage  and  power.  They  were  quick  to  kill  him, 
yet  quick  also  to  give  him  a  chance  of  life  by  surrender, 
and  after  that  were — nine  times  out  of  ten — chivalrous 
and  kindly,  but  incredibly  brutal  on  the  rare  occasions 
when  passion  overcame  them  at  some  tale  of  treacher\'. 
They  had  the  pride  of  the  skilled  laborer  in  his  own  craft, 
as  machine-gunners,  bombers,  raiders,  trench-mortar- 
men,  and  were  keen  to  show  their  skill,  whatever  the 


396  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

risks.  They  were  healthy  animals,  with  animal  courage 
as  well  as  animal  fear,  and  they  had,  some  of  them,  a 
spiritual  and  moral  fervor  which  bade  them  risk  death  to 
save  a  comrade,  or  to  save  a  position,  or  to  kill  the  fear 
that  tried  to  fetter  them,  or  to  lead  men  with  greater 
fear  than  theirs.  They  lived  from  hour  to  hour  and  for- 
got the  peril  or  the  misery  that  had  passed,  and  did  not 
forestall  the  future  by  apprehension  unless  they  were  of 
sensitive  mind,  with  the  worst  quality  men  might  have 
in  modern  warfare — imagination. 

They  trained  themselves  to  an  intense  egotism  within 
narrow  boundaries.  Fifty  yards  to  the  left,  or  five  hun- 
dred, men  were  being  pounded  to  death  by  shell-fire. 
Fifty  yards  to  the  right,  or  five  hundred,  men  were  being 
mowed  down  by  machine-gun  fire.  For  the  time  being 
their  particular  patch  was  quiet.  It  was  their  luck. 
Why  worry  about  the  other  fellow .f"  The  length  of  a 
traverse  in  a  ditch  called  a  trench  might  make  all  the 
difference  between  heaven  and  hell.  Dead  bodies  were 
being  piled  up  on  one  side  of  the  traverse.  A  shell  had 
smashed  into  the  platoon  next  door.  There  was  a  nasty 
mess.  Men  sat  under  their  own  mud-bank  and  scooped 
out  a  tin  of  bully  beef  and  hoped  nothing  would  scoop 
them  out  of  their  bit  of  earth.  This  protective  egotism 
seemed  to  me  the  instinctive  soul-armor  of  men  in  dan- 
gerous places  when  I  saw  them  in  the  line.  In  a  little 
way,  not  as  a  soldier,  but  as  a  correspondent,  taking  only 
a  thousandth  part  of  the  risks  of  fighting-men,  I  found 
myself  using  this  self-complacency.  They  were  strafing 
on  the  left.  Shells  were  pitching  on  the  right.  Very 
nasty  for  the  men  in  either  of  those  places.  Poor  devils! 
But  meanwhile  I  was  on  a  safe  patch,  it  seemed.  Thank 
Heaven  for  that! 

"Here,"  said  an  elderly  officer— one  of  those  rare 
exalted  souls  who  thought  that  death  was  a  little  thing 
to  give  for  one's  country's  sake — **here  we  may  be  killed 
at  any  moment!" 

He  spoke  the  words  in  Contalmaison  with  a  glow  in  his 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  397 

voice,  as  though  announcing  glad  tidings  to  a  friend  who 
was  a  war  artist  camouflaged  as  a  lieutenant  and  new  to 
the  scene  of  battle. 

"But,"  said  the  soldier-artist,  adjusting  his  steel  hat 
nervously,  "I  don't  want  to  be  killed!  I  hate  the  idea 
of  it!" 

He  was  the  normal  man.  The  elderly  officer  was  ab- 
normal. The  normal  man,  soldier  without  camouflage, 
had  no  use  for  death  at  all,  unless  it  was  in  connection 
with  the  fellow  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  way.  He 
hated  the  notion  of  it  applied  to  himself.  He  fought 
ferociously,  desperately,  heroically,  to  escape  it.  Yet 
there  were  times,  many  times,  when  he  paid  not  the 
slightest  attention  to  the  near  neighborhood  of  that  grisly 
specter,  because  in  immediate,  temporary  tranquillity  he 
thrust  the  thought  from  his  mind,  and  smoked  a  cigarette, 
and  exchanged  a  joke  with  the  fellow  at  his  elbow.  There 
were  other  times  when,  in  a  state  of  mental  exaltation,  or 
spiritual  self-sacrifice,  or  physical  excitement,  he  acted 
regardless  of  all  risks  and  did  mad,  marvelous,  almost 
miraculous  things,  hardly  conscious  of  his  own  acts,  but 
impelled  to  do  as  he  did  by  the  passion  within  him — pas- 
sion of  love,  passion  of  hate,  passion  of  fear,  or  passion  of 
pride.  Those  men,  moved  like  that,  were  the  leaders, 
the  heroes,  and  groups  followed  them  sometimes  because 
of  their  intensity  of  purpose  and  the  infection  of  their 
emotion,  and  the  comfort  that  came  from  their  real  o^ 
apparent  self-confidence  in  frightful  situations.  Those 
who  got  through  were  astonished  at  their  own  courage. 
Many  of  them  became  convinced  consciously  or  subcon- 
sciously that  they  were  immune  from  shells  and  bullets. 
They  walked  through  harassing  fire  with  a  queer  sense  of 
carelessness.  They  had  escaped  so  often  that  some  of 
them  had  a  kind  of  disdain  of  shell-bursts,  until,  perhaps, 
one  day  something  snapped  in  their  nervous  system,  as 
often  it  did,  and  the  bang  of  a  door  in  a  billet  behind  the 
Hnes,  or  a  wreath  of  smoke  from  some  domestic  chimney, 
gave  them  a  sudden  shock  of  fear.     Men  diff'ered  wonder-  , 


398  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

/Ifully  in  their  nerve-resistance,  and  it  was  no  question  of 

[jdifFerence  in  courage. 

In  the  mass  all  our  soldiers  seemed  equally  brave.  In 
the  mass  they  seemed  astoundingly  cheerful.  In  spite  of 
all  the  abomination  of  that  Somme  fighting  our  troops 
before  battle  and  after  battle — a  few  days  after — looked 
bright-eyedy  free  from  haunting  anxieties,  and  were  easy 
in  their  way  of  laughter.  It  was  optimism  in  the  mass, 
heroism  in  the  mass.  It  was  only  when  one  spoke  to 
the  individual,  some  friend  who  bared  his  soul  a  second, 
or  some  soldier-ant  in  the  multitude,  with  whom  one 
talked  with  truth,  that  one  saw  the  hatred  of  a  man  for 
his  job,  the  sense  of  doom  upon  him,  the  weakness  that 
was  in  his  strength,  the  bitterness  of  his  grudge  against  a 
fate  that  forced  him  to  go  on  in  this  way  of  hfe,  the  re- 
membrance of  a  life  more  beautiful  which  he  had  aban- 
doned— all  mingled  with  those  other  qualities  of  pride 
and  comradeship,  and  that  illogical  sense  of  humor  which 
made  up  the  strange  complexity  of  his  psychology. 


XV 

It  was  a  colonel  of  the  North  Staffordshires  who  re- 
vealed to  me  the  astounding  belief  that  he  was  "immune" 
from  shell-fire,  and  I  met  other  men  afterward  with  the 
.same  conviction.  He  had  just  come  out  of  desperate 
fighting  in  the  neighborhood  of  Thiepval,  where  his  bat- 
talion had  sufi'ered  heavily,  and  at  first  he  was  rude  and 
sullen  in  the  hut.  I  gaged  him  as  a  hard  Northerner, 
without  a  shred  of  sentiment  or  the  flicker  of  any  imagina- 
tive light;  a  stern,  ruthless  man.  He  \y^s  bitter  in  his 
speech  to  me  because  the  North  Staffords  were  never 
mentioned  in  my  despatches.  He  believed  that  this  was 
due  to  some  personal  spite — not  knowing  the  injustice  of 
our  military  censorship  under  the  orders  of  G.  H.  Q. 

"Why  the  hell  don't  we  get  a  word?"  he  asked. 
"Haven't  we  done  as  well  as  anybody,  died  as  much?" 

I  promised  to  do  what  I  could— which  was  nothing — 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  399 

to  put  the  matter  right,  and  presently  he  softened,  and 
later  was  amazingly  candid  in  self-revelation.  xN 

"I  have  a  mystical  power,"  he  said.  ''Nothing  will 
ever  hit  me  as  long  as  I  keep  that  power  which  comes 
from  faith.  It  is  a  question  of  absolute  belief  in  the  dom- 
ination of  mind  over  matter.  I  go  through  any  barrage 
unscathed  because  my  will  is  strong  enough  to  turn  aside 
explosive  shells  and  machine-gun  bullets.  As  matter 
they  must  obey  my  intelligence.  They  are  powerless  to 
resist  the  mind  of  a  man  in  touch  with  the  Universa)// 
Spirit,  as  I  am." 

He  spoke  quietly  and  soberly.  In  a  matter-of-fact  way. 
I  decided  that  he  was  mad.  That  was  not  surprising>^ 
We  were  all  mad,  in  one  way  or  another  or  at  one  time 
or  another.  It  was  the  unusual  form  of  madness  that 
astonished  me.  I  envied  him  his  particular  .'IMnk."  I 
wished  I  could  cultivate  it,  as  an  aid  to  courage.  He 
claimed  another  peculiar  form  of  knowledge.  He  knew 
before  each  action,  he  told  me,  what  officers  and  men  of/ 
his  would  be  killed  in  battle.  He  looked  at  a  man's  eyes 
and  knew,  and  he  claimed  that  he  never  made  a  mistake. 
.  .  .  He  was  sorry  to  possess  that  second__sight,  and  it 
worried  him. 

There  were  many  men  who  had  a  conviction  that  they 
would  not  be  killed,  although  they  did  not  state  it  in  the 
terms  expressed  by  the  colonel  of  the  North  Stafford- 
shires,  and  it  is  curious  that  in  some  cases  I  know  they 
were  not  mistaken  and  are  still  alive.  It  was  indeed  a 
general  beliet  that  if  a  man  funked  being  hit  he  was  sure 
to  fall,  that  being  the  reverse  side  of  the  argument. 

I  saw  the  serene  cheerfulness  of  men  in  the  places  of 
death  at  many  times  and  in  many  places,  and  I  remember 
one  group  of  friends  on  the  Somme  who  revealed  that 
quality  to  a  high  degree.  It  was  when  our  front-hne  ran 
just  outside  the  village  of  Martinpuich  to  Courcelette, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Bapaume  road,  and  when  the 
8th-ioth  Gordons  were  there,  after  their  fight  through 


400  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Longueval  and  over  the  ridge.  It  was  the  Httle  crowd 
I  have  mentioned  before  in  the  battle  of  Loos,  and  it  was 
Lieut.  John  Wood  who  took  me  to  the  battahon  head- 
quarters located  under  some  sand-bags  in  a  German  dug- 
out. All  the  way  up  to  Contalmaison  and  beyond  there 
were  the  signs  of  recent  bloodshed  and  of  present  peril. 
Dead  horses  lay  about,  disemboweled  by  shell-fire.  Legs 
and  arms  protruded  from  shell-craters  where  bodies  lay 
half  buried.  Heavy  crumps  came  howling  through  the 
sky  and  bursting  with  enormous  noise  here,  there,  and 
everywhere  over  that  vast,  desolate  battlefield,  with  its 
clumps  of  ruin  and  rows  of  dead  trees.  It  was  the  devil's 
hunting-ground  and  I  hated  every  yard  of  it.  But  John 
Wood,  who  lived  in  it,  was  astoundingly  cheerful,  and  a 
fine,  sturdy,  gallant  figure,  in  his  kilted  dress,  as  he 
climbed  over  sand-bags,  walked  on  the  top  of  communi- 
cation trenches  (not  bothering  to  take  cover)  and  skirt- 
ing round  hedges  of  barbed  wire,  apparently  unconscious 
of  the  "crumps"  that  were  bursting  around.  I  found 
laughter  and  friendly  greeting  in  a  hole  in  the  earth  where 
the  battalion  staff  was  crowded.  The  colonel  was  cour- 
teous, but  busy.  He  rather  deprecated  the  notion  that 
I  should  go  up  farther,  to  the  ultimate  Hmit  of  our  Hne. 
It  was  no  use  putting  one's  head  into  trouble  without 
reasonable  purpose,  and  the  German  guns  had  been  blow- 
ing in  sections  of  his  new-made  trenches.  But  John 
Wood  was  insistent  that  I  should  meet  "old  Thom," 
afterward  in  command  of  the  battalion.  He  had  just 
been  buried  and  dug  out  again.  He  would  hke  to  see  me. 
So  we  left  the  cover  of  the  dugout  and  took  to  the  open 
again.  Long  lines  of  Jocks  were  digging  a  support  trench 
— digging  with  a  kind  of  rhythmic  movement  as  they 
threw  up  the  earth  with  their  shovels.  Behind  them 
was  another  line  of  Jocks,  not  working.  They  lay  as 
though  asleep,  out  in  the  open.  They  were  the  dead  of 
the  last  advance.  Captain  Thom  was  leaning  up  against 
the  wall  of  the  front-line  trench,  smoking  a  cigarette,  with 
his  steel  hat  on  the  back  of  his  head — ^a  handsome,  laugh- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  401^ 

ing  figure.  He  did  not  look  like  a  man  who  had  just  been 
buried  and  dug  out  again. 

"It  was  a  narrow  shave,"  he  said.  *'A  beastly  shell 
covered  me  with  a  ton  of  earth.  .  .  .  Have  a  cigarette, 
won't  you?" 

We  gossiped  as  though  in  St.  James's  Street.  Other 
young  Scottish  officers  came  up  and  shook  hands,  and 
said:  "Jolly  weather,  isn't  it.^*  What  do  you  think  of 
our  little  show?"  Not  one  of  them  gave  a  glance  at  the 
line  of  dead  men  over  there,  behind  their  parados.  They 
told  me  some  of  the  funny  things  that  had  happened 
lately  in  the  battalion,  some  grim  jokes  by  tough  Jocks. 
They  had  a  fine  crowd  of  men.  You  couldn't  beat  them. 
**  Well,  good  morning !  Must  get  on  with  the  job."  There 
was  no  anguish  there,  no  sense  of  despair,  no  sullen  hatred 
of  this  life,  so  near  to  death.  They  seemed  to  like  it.  .  .  . 
They  did  not  really  like  it.  They  only  made  the  best  of 
it,  without  gloom.  I  saw  they  did  not  like  this  job  of 
battle,  one  evening  in  their  mess  behind  the  line.  The 
colonel  who  commanded  them  at  the  time,  Celt  of  the 
Celts,  was  in  a  queer  mood.  He  was  a  queer  man,  aloof 
in  his  manner,  a  little  "fey."  He  was  annoyed  with  three 
of  his  officers  who  had  come  back  late  from  three  days' 
Paris  leave.  They  were  giants,  but  stood  like  school- 
boys before  their  master  while  he  spoke  ironical,  bittei 
words.  Later  in  the  evening  he  mentioned  casually  that 
they  must  prepare  to  go  into  the  line  again  under  special 
orders.  What  about  the  store  of  bombs,  small-arms  am- 
munition, machine-guns? 

The  officers  were  stricken  into  silence.  They  stared  at 
one  another  as  though  to  say:  "What  does  the  old  man 
mean?  Is  this  true?"  One  of  them  became  rather  pale, 
and  there  was  a  look  of  tragic  resignation  in  his  eyes. 
Another  said,  "Hell!"  in  a  whisper.  The  adjutant  an- 
swered the  colonel's  questions  in  a  formal  way,  but  think- 
ing hard  and  studying  the  colonel's  face  anxiously. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  we  are  going  into  the  Hne  again, 
sir?     At  once?" 


402  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

The  colonel  laughed. 

"Don't  look  so  scared,  all  of  you!  It's  only  a  field- 
day  for  training." 

The  officers  of  the  Gordons  breathed  more  freely. 
Poof!  They  had  been  fairly  taken  in  by  the  "old  man's" 
leg-pulling.  .  .  .  No,  it  was  clear  they  did  not  find  any  real 
joy  in  the  line.  They  would  not  choose  a  front-line 
trench  as  the  most  desirable  place  of  residence. 

XVI 

In  queer  psychology  there  was  a  strange  mingling  of 
the  pitiful  and  comic — among  a  division  (the  35th)  known 
as  the  Bantams.  They  were  all  volunteers,  having  been 
rejected  by  tTie  ordinary  recruiting-officer  on  account  of 
their  diminutive  stature,  which  was  on  an  average  five 
/feet  high,  descending  to  four  feet  six.  Most  of  them 
came  from  Lancashire,  Cheshire,  Durham,  and  Glasgow, 
being  the  dwarfed  children  of  industrial  England  and 
its  mid-Victorian  cruelties.  Others  were  from  London, 
banded  together  in  a  battalion  of  the  Middlesex  Regiment. 
They  gave  a  shock  to  our  French  friends  when  they  arrived 
as  a  division  at  the  port  of  Boulogne. 

"Name  of  a  dog!"  said  the  quayside  loungers.  "Eng- 
land is  truly  in  a  bad  way.  She  is  sending  out  her  last 
reserves!" 

"  But  they  are  the  soldiers  of  Lilliput!"  exclaimed  others. 

"It  is  terrible  that  they  should  send  these  little  ones," 
said  kind-hearted  fishwives. 

Under  the  training  of  General  Pi,  who  commanded 
them,  they  became  smart  and  brisk  in  the  ranks.  They 
saluted  Hke  miniature  Guardsmen,  marched  with  quick 
little  steps  like  clockwork  soldiers.  It  was  comical  to 
see  them  strutting  up  and  down  as  sentries  outside  divi- 
sional headquarters,  with  their  bayonets  high  above  their 
wee  bodies.  In  trench  warfare  they  did  well — though 
the  fire-step  had  to  be  raised  to  let  them  see  over  the  top 
— and  in  one  raid  captured  a  German  machine-gun  which 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  403 

I  saw  in  their  hands,  and  hauled  it  back  (a  heavier  weight 
than  ours)  hke  ants  strugghng  with  a  stick  of  straw.  In 
actual  battle  they  were  hardly  strong  enough  and  could 
not  carry  all  that  burden  of  fighting-kit — steel  helmet, 
rifle,  hand-grenades,  shovels,  empty  sand-bags — with 
which  other  troops  went  into  action.  So  they  were  used 
as  support  troops  mostly,  behind  the  Black  Watch  and 
other  battalions  near  Bazentin  and  Longueval,  and  there 
these  poor  little  men  dug  and  dug  like  beavers  and 
crouched  in  the  cover  they  made  under  damnable  fire, 
until  many  of  them  were  blown  to  bits.  There  was  no 
*' glory"  in  their  job,  only  filth  and  blood,  but  they  held 
the  ground  and  suffered  it  all,  not  gladly.  They  had  a 
chance  of  taking  prisoners  at  Longueval,  where  they 
rummaged  in  German  dugouts  after  the  line  had  been 
taken  by  the  15th  Scottish  Division  and  the  3d,  and  they 
brought  back  a  number  of  enormous  Bavarians  who  were 
hke  the  Brobdingnagians  to  these  Httle  men  of  Lilliput  and 
disgusted  with  that  humihation.  I  met  the  whole  crowd 
of  them  after  that  adventure,  as  they  sat,  half  naked, 
picking  the  lice  out  of  their  shirts,  and  the  conversation 
I  had  with  them  remains  in  my  memory  because  of  its 
grotesque  humor  and  tragic  comicality.  They  were  ex- 
cited and  emotional,  these  stunted  men.  They  cursed 
the  war  with  the  foulest  curses  of  Scottish  and  Northern 
dialects.  There  was  one  fellow — the  jester  of  them  all — 
whose  language  would  have  made  the  poppies  blush. 
With  ironical  laughter,  outrageous  blasphemy,  grotesque 
imagery,  he  described  the  suffering  of  himself  and  his 
mates  under  barrage  fire,  which  smashed  many  of  them 
into  bleeding  pulp.  He  had  no  use  for  this  war.  He 
cursed  the  name  of  "glory."  He  advocated  a  trade- 
unionism  among  soldiers  to  down  tools  whenever  there 
was  a  threat  of  war.  He  was  a  Bolshevist  before  Bolshe- 
vism. Yet  he  had  no  liking  for  Germans  and  desired  to 
cut  them  into  small  bits,  to  slit  their  throats,  to  disem- 
bowel them.  He  looked  homeward  to  a  Yorkshire  town 
and  wondered  what  his  missus  would  say  if  she  saw  him 


404  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

scratching  himself  Hke  an  ape,  or  lying  with  his  head  in 
the  earth  with  shells  bursting  around  him,  or  prodding 
Germans  with  a  bayonet.  "Oh,"  said  that  live-foot  hero, 
"there  will  be  a  lot  of  murder  after  this  bloody  war. 
What's  human  life?  What's  the  value  of  one  man's 
throat?  We're  trained  up  as  murderers — I  don't  dislike 
it,  mind  you — and  after  the  war  we  sha'n't  get  out  of  the 
habit  of  it.     It  '11  come  nat'ral  like!" 

He  was  talking  for  my  benefit,  egged  on  to  further 
audacities  by  a  group  of  comrades  who  roared  with  laugh- 
ter and  said:  "Go  it.  Bill!  That's  the  stuff!"  Among 
these  Lilliputians  were  fellows  who  sat  aloof  and  sullen, 
or  spoke  of  their  adventure  with  its  recent  horror  in  their 
eyes.  Some  of  them  had  big  heads  on  small  bodies,  as 
though  they  suffered  from  water  on  the  brain.  .  .  .  Many 
of  them  were  sent  home  afterward.  General  Haldane, 
as  commander  of  the  6th  Corps,  paraded  them,  and  poked 
his  stick  at  the  more  wizened  ones,  the  obviously  unfit, 
the  degenerates,  and  said  at  each  prod,  "You  can  go.  .  .  . 
You.  .  .  You.  .  .  ."     The  Bantam  Division  ceased  to  exist. 

They  afforded  many  jokes  to  the  army.  One  anecdote 
went  the  round.  A  Bantam  died — of  disease  ("and  he 
would,"  said  General  Haldane) — and  a  comrade  came  to 
see  his  corpse. 

"Shut  ze  door  ven  you  come  out,"  said  the  old  woman 
of  his  billet.     "Fermez  la  porte,  mon  vieux." 

The  living  Bantam  went  to  see  the  dead  one,  and  came 
downstairs  much  moved  by  grief. 

"I've  seed  poor  Bill,"  he  said. 

"As-tu  ferme  la  porte?"  said  the  old  woman,  anxiously. 

The  Bantam  wondered  at  the  anxious  inquiry;  asked 
the  reason  of  it. 

"C'est  a  cause  du  chat!"  said  the  old  woman.  "Ze 
cat,  Monsieur,  'e  'ave  'ad  your  friend  in  ze  passage  tree 
time  already  to-day.     Trois  fois!" 

Poor  little  men  born  of  diseased  civilization!  They 
were  volunteers  to  a  man,  and  some  of  them  with  as 
rnuch  courage  as  soldiers  twice  their  size, 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  405 

They  were  the  Bantams  who  told  me  of  the  AngHcan 
padre  at  Longueval.  It  was  Father  Hall  of  Mirfield, 
attached  to  the  South  African  Brigade.  He  came  out  to 
a  dressing  station  established  in  the  one  bit  of  ruin  which 
could  be  used  for  shelter,  and  devoted  himself  to  the 
wounded  with  a  spiritual  fervor.  They  were  suffering 
horribly  from  thirst,  which  made  their  tongues  swell  and 
set  their  throats  on  fire. 

"Water!"  they  cried.  "Water!  For  Christ's  sake, 
water!" 

There  was  no  water,  except  at  a  well  in  Longueval, 
under  the  fire  of  German  snipers,  who  picked  off  our  men 
when  they  crawled  down  like  wild  dogs  with  their  tongues 
lolling  out.  There  was  one  German  officer  there  in  a 
shell-hole  not  far  from  the  well,  who  sat  with  his  revolver 
handy,  and  he  was  a  dead  shot. 

But  he  did  not  shoot  the  padre.  Something  in  the  face 
and  figure  of  that  chaplain,  his  disregard  of  the  bullets 
snapping  about  him,  the  upright,  fearless  way  in  which 
he  crossed  that  way  of  death,  held  back  the  trigger-finger 
of  the  German  officer  and  he  let  him  pass.  He  passed 
many  times,  untouched  by  bullets  or  machine-gun  fire, 
and  he  went  into  bad  places,  pits  of  horror,  carrying  hot 
tea,  which  he  made  from  the  well-water  for  men  in  agony. 

XVII 

During  these  battles  I  saw  thousands  of  German  pris- 
oners, and  studied  their  types  and  physiognomy,  and,  by 
permission  of  Intelligence  officers,  spoke  with  many  of 
them  in  their  barbed-wire  cages  or  on  the  field  of  bat- 
tle when  they  came  along  under  escort.  Some  of  themi 
looked  degraded,  bestial  men.  One  could  imagine  them 
guilty  of  the  foulest  atrocities.  But  in  the  mass  they 
seemed  to  me  decent,  simple  men,  remarkably  like  our 
own  lads  from  the  Saxon  counties  of  England,  though  not 
quite  so  bright  and  brisk,  as  was  only  natural  in  their 
position  as  prisoners,  with  all  the  misery  of  war  in  their 


4o6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

souls.  Afterward  they  worked  with  patient  industry  in 
the  prison-camps  and  established  their  own  discipline, 
and  gave  very  little  trouble  if  well  handled.  In  each 
crowd  of  them  there  were  fellows  who  spoke  perfect  Eng- 
lish, having  lived  in  England  as  waiters  and  hairdressers, 
or  clerks  or  mechanics.  It  was  with  them  I  spoke  most 
because  it  was  easiest,  but  I  know  enough  German  to 
talk  with  the  others,  and  I  found  among  them  all  the  same 
loathing  of  war,  the  same  bewilderment  as  to  its  causes, 
the  same  sense  of  being  driven  by  evil  powers  above  them. 
The  officers  were  different.  They  lost  a  good  deal  of 
their  arrogance,  but  to  the  last  had  excuses  ready  for  all 
that  Germany  had  done,  and  almost  to  the  last  professed 
to  believe  that  Germany  would  win.  Their  sense  of 
caste  was  in  their  nature.  They  refused  to  travel  in  the 
same  carriages  with  their  men,  to  stay  even  for  an  hour 
in  the  same  inclosures  with  them.  They  regarded  them, 
for  the  most  part,  as  inferior  beings.  And  there  were 
castes  even  among  the  officers.  I  remember  that  in  the 
last  phase,  when  we  captured  a  number  of  cavalry  officers, 
these  elegant  sky-blue  fellows  held  aloof  from  the  infantry 
officers  and  would  not  mix  with  them.  One  of  them 
paced  up  and  down  all  night  alone,  and  all  next  day,  stiff 
in  the  corsets  below  that  sky-blue  uniform,  not  speaking 
to  a  soul,  though  within  a  few  yards  of  him  were  many 
officers  of  infantry  regiments. 

Our  men  treated  their  prisoners,  nearly  always,  after 
the  blood  of  battle  was  out  of  their  eyes,  with  a  good- 
natured  kindness  that  astonished  the  Germans  themselves. 
I  have  seen  them  filling  German  water-bottles  at  consid- 
erable trouble,  and  the  escorts,  two  or  three  to  a  big 
batch  of  men,  were  utterly  trustful  of  them.  "  Here,  hold 
my  rifle,  Fritz,"  said  one  of  our  men,  getting  down  from 
a  truck-train  to  greet  a  friend. 

An  officer  standing  by  took  notice  of  this. 

"Take  your  rifle  back  at  once!  Is  that  the  way  to 
guard  your  prisoners?" 

Our  man  was  astonished. 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  407 

*'Lor'  bless  you,  sir,  they  don't  want  no  guarding. 
They're  glad  to  be  took.     They  guard  themselves." 

''Your  men  are  extraordinary,"  a  German  officer  told 
me.  "They  asked  me  whether  I  would  care  to  go  down 
at  once  or  wait  till  the  barrage  had  passed." 

He  seemed  amazed  at  that  thoughtfulness  for  his  com- 
fort. It  was  in  the  early  days  of  the  Somme  fighting,  and 
crowds  of  our  men  stood  on  the  banks  above  a  sunken 
road,  watching  the  prisoners  coming  down.  This  officer 
who  spoke  to  me  had  an  Iron  Cross,  and  the  men  wanted 
to  see  it  and  handle  it. 

*'Will  they  give  it  back  again?"  he  asked,  nervously, 
fumbling  at  the  ribbon. 

''Certainly,"  I  assured  him. 

He  handed  it  to  me,  and  I  gave  it  to  the  men,  who 
passed  it  from  one  to  the  other  and  then  back  to  the 
owner. 

"Your  men  are  extraordinary,"  he  said.  "They  are 
wonderful." 

One  of  the  most  interesting  prisoners  I  met  on  the  field 
of  battle  was  a  tall,  black-bearded  man  whom  I  saw 
walking  away  from  La  Boisselle  when  that  place  was 
smoking  with  shell-bursts.  An  English  soldier  was  on 
each  side  of  him,  and  each  man  carried  a  hand-bag,  while 
this  black-bearded  giant  chatted  with  them. 

It  w^as  a  strange  group,  and  I  edged  nearer  to  them  and 
spoke  to  one  of  the  men. 

"Who's  this?     Why  do  you  carry  his  bags?" 

"Oh,  we're  giving  him  special  privileges,"  said  the  man. 
"He  stayed  behind  to  look  after  our  wounded.  Said  his 
job  was  to  look  after  wounded,  whoever  they  were.  So 
there  he's  been,  in  a  dugout  bandaging  our  lads;  and  no 
joke,  either.  It's  hell  up  there.  We're  glad  to  get  out 
of  it." 

I  spoke  to  the  German  doctor  and  walked  with  him. 
He  discussed  the  philosophy  of  the  war  simply  and  with 
what  seemed  Hke  sincerity. 

"This  war!"  he  said,  with  a  sad,  ironical  laugh.     "We 


4o8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

go  on  killing  one  another — to  no  purpose.  Europe  is  being 
bled  to  death  and  will  be  impoverished  for  long  years. 
We  Germans  thought  it  was  a  war  for  Kultur — our  civil- 
ization. Now  we  know  it  is  a  war  against  Kultur,  against 
rehgion,  against  all  civilization." 

"How  will  it  end."*"  I  asked  him. 

*'I  see  no  end  to  it,"  he  answered.  "It  is  the  suicide 
of  nations.  Germany  is  strong,  and  England  is  strong, 
and  France  is  strong.  It  is  impossible  for  one  side  to 
crush  the  other,  so  when  is  the  end  to  come?" 

I  met  many  other  prisoners  then  and  a  year  afterward 
who  could  see  no  end  of  the  massacre.  They  believed 
the  war  would  go  on  until  living  humanity  on  all  sides 
revolted  from  the  unceasing  sacrifice.  In  the  autumn  of 
191 8,  when  at  last  the  end  came  in  sight,  by  German  de- 
feat, unexpected  a  few  months  before  even  by  the  greatest 
optimist  in  the  British  armies,  the  German  soldiers  were 
glad.  They  did  not  care  how  the  war  ended  so  long  as 
it  ended.  Defeat?  What  did  that  matter?  Was  it 
worse  to  be  defeated  than  for  the  race  to  perish  by  bleed- 
ing to  death  ? 

XVIII 

The  struggle  for  the  Pozieres  ridge  and  High  Wood 
lasted  from  the  beginning  of  August  until  the  middle  of 
September — six  weeks  of  fighting  as  desperate  as  any  in 
the  history  of  the  world  until  that  time.  The  Australians 
dealt  with  Pozieres  itself,  working  round  Moquet  Farm, 
where  the  Germans  refused  to  be  routed  from  their  tun- 
nels, and  up  to  the  Windmill  on  the  high  ground  of 
Pozieres,  for  which  there  was  unceasing  slaughter  on  both 
sides  because  the  Germans  counter-attacked  again  and 
again,  and  waves  of  men  surged  up  and  fell  around  that 
mound  of  forsaken  brick,  which  I  saw  as  a  reddish  cone 
through  flame  and  smoke. 

Those  Australians  whom  I  had  seen  arrive  in  France 
had  proved  their  quality.  They  had  come  believing  that 
nothing  could  be  worse  than  their  ordeal  in  the  Darda- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  409 

nelles.  Now  they  knev*'  that  Pozieres  was  the  last  word 
in  frightfuhiess.  The  intensity  of  the  shell-fire  under 
which  they  lay  shook  them,  if  it  did  not  kill  them.  Many 
of  their  wounded  told  me  that  it  had  broken  their  nerve. 
They  would  never  fight  again  without  a  sense  of  horror. 

**Our  men  are  more  highly  strung  than  the  English," 
said  one  Australian  officer,  and  I  was  astonished  to  hear 
these  words,  because  those  Australians  seemed  to  me 
without  nerves,  and  as  tough  as  gristle  in  their  fiber. 

They  fought  stubbornly,  grimly,  in  ground  so  ravaged 
with  fire  that  the  earth  was  finely  powdered.  They 
stormed  the  Pozieres  ridge  yard  by  yard,  and  held  its 
crest  under  sweeping  barrages  which  tore  up  their  trenches 
as  soon  as  they  were  dug  and  buried  and  mangled  their 
living  flesh.  In  six  weeks  they  suffered  twenty  thousand 
casualties,  and  Pozieres  now  is  an  Australian  graveyard, 
and  the  memorial  that  stands  there  is  to  the  ghosts  of 
that  splendid  youth  which  fell  in  heaps  about  that  plateau 
and  the  slopes  below.  Many  English  boys  of  the  Sussex, 
West  Kents,  Surrey,  and  Warwick  regiments,  in  the  i8th 
Division,  died  at  their  side,  not  less  patient  in  sacrifice, 
not  liking  it  better.  Many  Scots  of  the  15th  and  9th 
Divisions,  many  New-Zealanders,  many  London  men  of 
the  47th  and  56th  Divisions,  fell,  killed  or  wounded,  to  the 
right  of  them,  on  the  way  to  Martinpuich,  and  Eaucourt 
I'Abbaye  and  Flers,  from  High  Wood  and  Longueval, 
and  Bazentin.  The  3d  Division  of  Yorkshires  and  North- 
umberland Fusiliers,  Royal  Scots  and  Gordons,  were 
earning  that  name  of  the  Iron  Division,  and  not  by  any 
easy  heroism.  Every  division  in  the  British  army  took 
its  turn  in  the  blood-bath  of  the  Somme  and  was  duly 
blooded,  at  a  cost  of  25  per  cent,  and  sometimes 
50  per  cent,  of  their  fighting  strength.  The  Canadians 
took  up  the  struggle  at  Courcelette  and  captured  it  in  a 
fierce  and  bloody  battle.  The  Australians  worked  up  on 
the  right  of  the  Albert-Bapaume  road  to  Thilloy  and  Ligny 
Thilloy.  On  the  far  left  the  fortress  of  Thiepval  had  fallen 
at   last   after  repeated   and   frightful   assaults,   which  I 


4IO  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

watched  from  ditches  close  enough  to  see  our  infantry — 
Wiltshires  and  Worcesters  of  the  25th  Division — trudging 
through  infernal  fire.  And  then  at  last,  after  five  months 
of  superhuman  effort,  enormous  sacrifice,  mass-heroism, 
desperate  will-power,  and  the  tenacity  of  each  individual 
human  ant  in  this  wild  ant-heap,  the  German  lines  were 
smashed,  the  Australians  surged  into  Bapaume,  and  the 
enemy,  stricken  by  the  prolonged  fury  of  our  attack,  fell 
back  in  a  far  and  wide  retreat  across  a  country  which  he 
laid  waste,  to  the  shelter  of  his  Hindenburg  line,  from 
Bullecourt  to  St.-Quentin. 

XIX 

The  goal  of  our  desire  seemed  attained  when  at  last  we 
reached  Bapaume  after  these  terrific  battles  in  which  all 
our  divisions,  numbering  nearly  a  million  men,  took  part, 
with  not  much  difference  in  courage,  not  much  difference 
in  average  of  loss.  By  the  end  of  that  year's  fighting  our 
casualties  had  mounted  up  to  the  frightful  total  of  four 
hundred  thousand  men.  Those  fields  were  strewn  with 
our  dead.  Our  graveyards  were  growing  forests  of  little 
white  crosses.  The  German  dead  lay  in  heaps.  There 
were  twelve  hundred  corpses  littered  over  the  earth  below 
Loupart  Wood,  in  one  mass,  and  eight  hundred  of  them 
were  German.  I  could  not  walk  without  treading  on 
them  there.  When  I  fell  in  the  slime  I  clutched  arms 
and  legs.     The  stench  of  death  was  strong  and  awful. 

But  our  men  who  had  escaped  death  and  shell-shock 
kept  their  sanity  through  all  this  wilderness  of  slaughter, 
kept — oh,  marvelous! — their  spirit  of  humor,  their  faith 
in  some  kind  of  victory.  I  was  with  the  Australians  on 
that  day  when  they  swarmed  into  Bapaume,  and  they 
brought  out  trophies  like  men  at  a  country  fair.  ...  I 
remember  an  Australian  colonel  who  came  riding  with  a 
German  beer-mug  at  his  saddle.  .  .  .  Next  day,  though 
shells  were  still  bursting  in  the  ruins,  some  Australian 
boys  set  up  some  painted  scenery  which  they  had  found 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  411 

among  the  rubbish,  and  chalked  up  the  name  of  the 
*'Coo-ee  Theater." 

The  enemy  was  in  retreat  to  his  Hindenburg  hne,  over 
a  wide  stretch  of  country  which  he  laid  waste  behind  him, 
making  a  desert  of  French  villages  and  orchards  and  parks, 
so  that  even  the  fruit-trees  were  cut  down,  and  the 
churches  blown  up,  and  the  graves  ransacked  for  their 
lead.  It  was  the  enemy's  first  retreat  on  the  western 
front,  and  that  ferocious  fighting  of  the  British  troops 
had  smashed  the  strongest  defenses  ever  built  in  war, 
and  our  raw  recruits  had  broken  the  most  famous  regi- 
ments of  the  German  army,  so  in  spite  of  all  tragedy  and 
all  agony  our  men  were  not  downcast,  but  followed  up 
their  enemy  with  a  sense  of  excitement  because  it  seemed 
so  much  like  victory  and  the  end  of  war. 

When  the  Germans  retreated  from  Gommecourt,  where 
so  many  boys  of  the  56th  (London)  Division  had  fallen 
on  the  1st  of  July,  I  went  through  that  evil  place  by  way 
of  Fonquevillers  (which  we  called  "Funky  Villas"),  and, 
stumbhng  over  the  shell-craters  and  broken  trenches  and 
dead  bodies  between  the  dead  masts  of  slashed  and 
branchless  trees,  came  into  the  open  country  to  our  out- 
post line.  I  met  there  a  friendly  sergeant  who  surprised 
me  by  referring  in  a  casual  way  to  a  little  old  book  of  mine. 

*'This  place,"  he  said,  glancing  at  me,  "is  a  strange 
Street  of  Adventure." 

It  reminded  me  of  another  reference  to  that  tale  of 
mine  when  I  was  among  a  crowd  of  London  lads  who  had 
just  been  engaged  in  a  bloody  fight  at  a  place  called  The 
Hairpin. 

A  young  officer  sent  for  me  and  I  found  him  in  the  loft 
of  a  stinking  barn,  sitting  in  a  tub  as  naked  as  he  was 
born. 

"I  just  wanted  to  ask  you,"  he  said,  "whether  Kath- 
arine married  Frank?" 

The  sergeant  at  Gommecourt  was  anxious  to  show  me 
his  own  Street  of  Adventure. 

"I  belong  to  Toc-emmas,"  he  said  (meaning  trench- 


412  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

mortars),  "and  my  officers  would  be  very  pleased  if  you 
would  have  a  look  at  their  latest  stunt.  We've  got  a  9.2 
mortar  in  Pigeon  Wood,  away  beyond  the  infantry.  It's 
never  been  done  before  and  we're  going  to  blow  old  Fritz 
out  of  Kite  Copse." 

I  followed  him  into  the  blue,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  and 
we  fell  in  with  a  young  officer  also  on  his  way  to  Pigeon 
Wood.  He  was  in  a  merry  mood,  in  spite  of  harassing 
fire  round  about  and  the  occasional  howl  of  a  5.9.  He 
kept  stopping  to  look  at  enormous  holes  in  the  ground 
and  laughing  at  something  that  seemed  to  tickle  his  sense 
of  humor. 

"See  that.?"  he  said.  "That's  old  CharHe  Lowndes's 
work." 

At  another  pit  in  upheaved  earth  he  said:  "That's 
Charlie  Lowndes  again.  .  .  .  Old  Charhe  gave  'em  hell. 
He's  a  topping  chap.  You  must  meet  him.  .  .  .  My  God! 
look  at  that!" 

He  roared  with  laughter  again,  on  the  edge  of  an  un- 
usually large  crater. 

"Who  is  CharHe?"  I  asked.     "Where  can  I  find  him.?" 

"Oh,  we  shall  meet  him  in  Pigeon  Wood.  He's  as 
pleased  as  Punch  at  having  got  beyond  the  infantry. 
First  time  it  has  ever  been  done.  Took  a  bit  of  doing, 
too,  with  the  largest  size  of  Toc-emma." 

We  entered  Pigeon  Wood  after  a  long  walk  over  wild 
chaos,  and,  guided  by  the  officer  and  sergeant,  I  dived 
down  into  a  deep  dugout  just  captured  from  the  Ger- 
mans, who  were  two  hundred  yards  away  in  Kite  Copse. 

"What  cheer,  Charlie!"  shouted  the  young  officer. 

"Hullo,  fellow-my-lad !  .  .  .  Come  in.  We're  getting 
gloriously  hinged  on  a  rare  find  of  German  brandy." 

"Topping  and  Tve  brought  a  visitor." 

Capt.  Charles  Lowndes — "dear  old  Charlie" — received 
us  most  politely  in  one  of  the  best  dugouts  I  ever  saw, 
with  smoothly  paneled  walls  fitted  up  with  shelves,  and 
good  deal  furniture  made  to  match. 

"This  is  a  nice  little  home  in  hell,"  said  Charles.     "At 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  413 

any  moment,  of  course,  we  may  be  blown  to  bits,  but 
meanwhile  it  is  very  comfy  down  here,  and  what  makes 
everything  good  is  a  bottle  of  rare  old  brandy  and  an  un- 
limited supply  of  German  soda-water.  Also  to  add  to 
the  gaiety  of  indecent  minds  there  is  a  complete  outfit  of 
ladies'  clothing  in  a  neighboring  dugout.  Funny  fellows 
those  German  officers.  Take  a  pew,  won't  you?  and 
have  a  drink.     Orderly!" 

He  shouted  for  his  man  and  ordered  a  further  supply  of 
German  soda-water. 

We  drank  to  the  confusion  of  the  enemy,  in  his  own 
brandy  and  soda-water,  out  of  his  own  mugs,  sitting  on 
his  own  chairs  at  his  own  table,  and  "dear  old  Charlie," 
who  was  a  little  etoile^  as  afterward  I  became,  with  a  sense 
of  deep  satisfaction  (the  noise  of  shells  seemed  more  re- 
mote), discoursed  on  war,  which  he  hated,  German  psy- 
chology, trench-mortar  barrages  (they  had  simply  blown 
the  Boche  out  of  Gommecourt),  and  his  particular  fancy 
stunt  of  stealing  a  march  on  the  infantry,  who,  said  Cap- 
tain Lowndes,  are  *'laps  behind."  Other  officers  crowded 
into  the  dugout.  One  of  them  said:  "You  must  come 
round  to  mine.  It's  a  blasted  palace,"  and  I  went  round 
later  and  he  told  me  on  the  way  that  he  had  escaped  so 
often  from  shell-bursts  that  he  thought  the  average  of 
luck  was  up  and  he  was  bound  to  get  *'done  in"  before 
long. 

Charlie  Lowndes  dispensed  drinks  with  noble  gener- 
osity. There  was  much  laughter  among  us,  and  after- 
ward we  went  upstairs  and  to  the  edge  of  the  wood,  to 
which  a  heavy,  wet  mist  was  clinging,  and  I  saw  the 
trench-mortar  section  play  the  devil  with  Kite  Copse, 
over  the  way.  Late  in  the  afternoon  I  took  my  leave  of 
a  merry  company  in  that  far-flung  outpost  of  our  line,  and 
wished  them  luck.  A  few  shells  crashed  through  the 
wood  as  I  left,  but  I  was  disdainful  of  them  after  that 
admirable  brandy.  It  was  a  long  walk  back  to  "Funky 
Villas,"  not  without  the  interest  of  arithmetical  calcula- 
tions about  the  odds  of  luck  in  harassing  fire,  but  a  thou- 


414  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

sand  yards  or  so  from  Pigeon  Wood  I  looked  back  and 
saw  that  the  enemy  had  begun  to  "take  notice."  Heavy 
shells  were  smashing  through  the  trees  there  ferociously. 
I  hoped  my  friends  were  safe  in  their  dugouts  again.  .  .  . 
And  I  thought  of  the  laughter  and  gallant  spirit  of  the 
young  men,  after  five  months  of  the  greatest  battles  in 
the  history  of  the  world.     It  seemed  to  me  wonderful. 

XX 

I  have  described  what  happened  on  our  side  of  the  lines, 
our  fearful  losses,  the  stream  of  wounded  that  came  back 
day  by  day,  the  ''Butchers'  Shops,"  the  agony  in  men's 
souls,  the  shell-shock  cases,  the  welter  and  bewilderment 
of  battle,  the  shelling  of  our  own  troops,  the  lack  of  com- 
munication between  fighting  units  and  the  command,  the 
filth  and  stench  of  the  hideous  shambles  which  were  our 
battlefields.  But  to  complete  the  picture  of  that  human 
conflict  in  the  Somme  I  must  now  tell  what  happened  on 
the  German  side  of  the  lines,  as  I  was  able  to  piece  the 
tale  together  from  German  prisoners  with  whom  I  talked, 
German  letters  which  I  found  in  their  abandoned  dugouts, 
and  documents  which  fell  into  the  hands  of  our  staff- 
officers. 

Our  men  were  at  least  inspirited  by  the  knowledge  that 
they  were  beating  their  enemy  back,  in  spite  of  their  own 
bloody  losses.  The  Germans  had  not  even  that  source 
of  comfort,  for  whatever  it  might  be  worth  under  barrage 
fire.  The  mistakes  of  our  generalship,  the  inefficiency  of 
our  staff-work,  were  not  greater  than  the  blunderings  of 
the  German  High  Command,  and  their  problem  was  more 
difficult  than  ours  because  of  the  weakness  of  their  re- 
serves, owing  to  enormous  preoccupation  on  the  Russian 
front.     The  agony  of  their  men  was  greater  than  ours. 

To  understand  the  German  situation  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  from  January  to  May,  1916,  the  German 
command  on  the  western  front  was  concentrating  all  its 
energy  and  available  strength  in  man-power  and  gun- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  415 

power  upon  the  attack  of  Verdun,  The  Crown  Prince 
had  staked  his  reputation  upon  that  adventure,  which  he 
beheved  would  end  in  the  capture  of  the  strongest  French 
fortress  and  the  destruction  of  the  French  armies.  He 
demanded  men  and  more  men,  until  every  unit  that 
could  be  spared  from  other  fronts  of  the  line  had  been 
thrown  into  that  furnace.  Divisions  were  called  in  from 
other  theaters  of  war,  and  increased  the  strength  on  the 
western  front  to  a  total  of  about  one  hundred  and  thirty 
divisions. 

But  the  months  passed  and  Verdun  still  held  out  above 
piles  of  German  corpses  on  its  slopes,  and  in  June  Ger- 
many looked  east  and  saw  a  great  menace.  The  Russian 
offensive  was  becoming  violent.  German  generals  on  the 
Russian  fronts  sent  desperate  messages  for  help.  **Send 
us  more  men,"  they  said,  and  from  the  western  front 
four  divisions  containing  thirty-nine  battalions  were  sent 
to  them. 

They  must  have  been  sent  grudgingly,  for  now  another 
menace  threatened  the  enemy,  and  it  was  ours.  The 
British  armies  were  getting  ready  to  strike.  In  spite  of 
Verdun,  France  still  had  men  enough — withdrawn  from 
that  part  of  the  line  in  which  they  had  been  relieved  by 
the  British — to  co-operate  in  a  new  attack. 

It  was  our  offensive  that  the  German  command  feared 
most,  for  they  had  no  exact  knowledge  of  our  strength  or 
of  the  quality  of  our  new  troops.  They  knew  that  our 
army  had  grown  prodigiously  since  the  assault  on  Loos, 
nearly  a  year  before. 

They  had  heard  of  the  Canadian  reinforcements,  and 
the  coming  of  the  Australians,  and  the  steady  increase  of 
recruiting  in  England,  and  month  by  month  they  had 
heard  the  louder  roar  of  our  guns  along  the  line,  and  had 
seen  their  destructive  effect  spreading  and  becoming  more 
terrible.  They  knew  of  the  steady,  quiet  concentration 
of  batteries  and  divisions  on  the  west  and  south  of  the 
Ancre. 

The  German  command  expected  a  heavy   blow  and 


4i6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

prepared  for  it,  but  as  yet  had  no  knowledge  of  the  driv- 
ing force  behind  it.  What  confidence  they  had  of  being 
able  to  resist  the  British  attack  was  based  upon  the 
wonderful  strength  of  the  lines  which  they  had  been 
digging  and  fortifying  since  the  autumn  of  the  first  year 
of  war — ^*' impregnable  positions,"  they  had  called  them 
■ — the  inexperience  of  our  troops,  their  own  immense  quan- 
tity of  machine-guns,  the  courage  and  skill  of  their  gun- 
ners, and  their  profound  belief  in  the  superiority  of  Ger- 
man generalship. 

In  order  to  prevent  espionage  during  the  coming 
struggle,  and  to  conceal  the  movement  of  troops  and 
guns,  they  ordered  the  civil  populations  to  be  removed 
from  villages  close  behind  their  positions,  drew  cordons 
of  military  police  across  the  country,  picketed  crossroads, 
and  established  a  network  of  counter  espionage  to  pre- 
vent any  leakage  of  information. 

To  inspire  the  German  troops  with  a  spirit  of  martial 
fervor  (not  easily  aroused  to  fever  pitch  after  the  bloody 
losses  before  Verdun)  Orders  of  the  Day  were  issued  to 
the  battalions  counseling  them  to  hold  fast  against  the 
hated  Enghsh,  who  stood  foremost  in  the  way  of  peace 
(that  was  the  gist  of  a  manifesto  by  Prince  Rupprecht 
of  Bavaria,  which  I  found  in  a  dugout  at  Montauban), 
and  promising  them  a  speedy  ending  to  the  war. 

Great  stores  of  material  and  munitions  were  concen- 
trated at  rail-heads  and  dumps  ready  to  be  sent  up  to 
the  firing-lines,  and  the  perfection  of  German  organiza- 
tion may  well  have  seemed  flawless — before  the  attack 
began. 

When  they  began  they  found  that  in  "heavies"  and  in 
expenditure  of  high  explosives  they  were  outclassed. 

They  were  startled,  too,  by  the  skill  and  accuracy  of  the 
British  gunners,  whom  they  had  scorned  as  **  amateurs," 
and  by  the  daring  of  our  airmen,  who  flew  over  their  lines 
with  the  utmost  audacity,  "spotting"  for  the  guns,  and 
registering  on  batteries,  communication  trenches,  cross- 
roads, rail-heads,  and  every  vital  point  of  organization  in 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  417 

the  German  war-machine  working  opposite  the  British 
hnes  north  and  south  of  the  Ancre. 

Even  before  the  British  infantry  had  left  their  trenches 
at  daw^n  on  July  1st,  German  officers  behind  the  firing- 
lines  saw  with  anxiety  that  all  the  organization  which 
had  worked  so  smoothly  in  times  of  ordinary  trench- 
warfare  was  now  w^orking  only  in  a  hazardous  v/ay  under 
a  deadly  storm  of  shells. 

Food  and  supplies  of  all  kinds  could  not  be  sent  up  to 
front-line  trenches  without  many  casualties,  and  some- 
times could  not  be  sent  up  at  all.  Telephone  wires  were 
cut,  and  communications  broken  between  the  front  and 
headquarters  staffs.  Staff-officers  sent  up  to  report  were 
killed  on  the  way  to  the  lines.  Troops  moving  forward 
from  reserve  areas  came  under  heavy  fire  and  lost  many 
men  before  arriving  in  the  support  trenches. 

Prince  Rupprecht  of  Bavaria,  sitting  aloof  from  all  this 
in  personal  safety,  must  have  known  before  July  ist  that 
his  resources  in  men  and  material  would  be  strained  to 
the  uttermost  by  the  British  attack,  but  he  could  take  a 
broader  view  than  men  closer  to  the  scene  of  battle,  and 
taking  into  account  the  courage  of  his  troops  (he  had  no 
need  to  doubt  that),  the  immense  strength  of  their  posi- 
tions, dug  and  tunneled  beyond  the  power  of  high  explo- 
sives, the  number  of  his  machine-guns,  the  concentration 
of  his  artillery,  and  the  rawness  of  the  British  troops,  he 
could  count  up  the  possible  cost  and  believe  that  in  spite 
of  a  heavy  price  to  pay  there  would  be  no  break  in  his 
lines. 

At  7.30  A.M.  on  July  1st  the  British  infantry,  as  I  have 
told,  left  their  trenches  and  attacked  on  the  right  angle 
down  from  Gommecourt,  Beaumont  Hamel,  Thiepval, 
Ovillers,  and  La  Boisselle,  and  eastward  from  Fricourt, 
below  Mametz  and  Montauban.  For  a  week  the  German 
troops — Bavarians  and  Prussians — had  been  crouching 
in  their  dugouts,  listening  to  the  ceaseless  crashing  of  the 
British  ** drum-fire."  In  places  like  Beaumont  Hamel, 
the  men  down  in  the  deep  tunnels — some  of  them  large 


41 8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

enough  to  hold  a  battaHon  and  a  half — were  safe  as  long 
as  they  stayed  there.  But  to  get  in  or  out  was  death. 
Trenches  disappeared  into  a  sea  of  shell-craters,  and  the 
men  holding  them — for  some  men  had  to  stay  on  duty 
there — were  blown  to  fragments. 

Many  of  the  shallower  dugouts  were  smashed  in  by 
heavy  shells,  and  officers  and  men  lay  dead  there  as  I  saw 
them  lying  on  the  first  days  of  July,  in  Fricourt  and  Ma- 
metz  and  Montauban.  The  living  men  kept  their  cour- 
age, but  belowground,  under  that  tumult  of  bursting 
shells,  and  wrote  pitiful  letters  to  their  people  at  home 
describing  the  horror  of  those  hours. 

"We  are  quite  shut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world," 
wrote  one  of  them.  "Nothing  comes  to  us.  No  letters. 
The  EngHsh  keep  such  a  barrage  on  our  approaches  it  is 
terrible.  To-morrow  evening  it  will  be  seven  days  since 
this  bombardment  began.  We  cannot  hold  out  much 
longer.     Everything  is  shot  to  pieces." 

Thirst  was  one  of  their  tortures.  In  many  of  the  tun- 
neled shelters  there  was  food  enough,  but  the  water  could 
not  be  sent  up.  The  German  soldiers  were  maddened  by 
thirst.  When  rain  fell  many  of  them  crawled  out  and 
drank  filthy  water  mixed  with  yellow  shell-sulphur,  and 
then  were  killed  by  high  explosives.  Other  men  crept 
out,  careless  of  death,  but  compelled  to  drink.  They 
crouched  over  the  bodies  of  the  men  who  lay  above,  or  in, 
the  shell-holes,  and  lapped  up  the  puddles  and  then 
crawled  down  again  if  they  were  not  hit. 

When  our  infantry  attacked  at  Gommecourt  and  Beau- 
mont Hamel  and  Thiepval  they  were  received  by  waves 
of  machine-gun  bullets  fired  by  men  who,  in  spite  of  the 
ordeal  of  our  seven  days'  bombardment,  came  out  into 
the  open  now,  at  the  moment  of  attack  which  they  knew 
through  their  periscopes  was  coming.  They  brought 
their  guns  above  the  shell-craters  of  their  destroyed 
trenches  under  our  barrage  and  served  them.  They  ran 
forward  even  into  No  Man's  Land,  and  planted  their 
machine-guns  there,   and  swept  down  our  men  as  they 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  419 

charged.  Over  their  heads  the  German  gunners  flung  a 
frightful  barrage,  plowing  gaps  in  the  ranks  of  our  men. 

On  the  left,  by  Gommecourt  and  Beaumont  Hamel, 
the  British  attack  failed,  as  I  have  told,  but  southward 
the  "impregnable"  lines  were  smashed  by  a  tide  of  British 
soldiers  as  sand  castles  are  overwhelmed  by  the  waves. 
Our  men  swept  up  to  Fricourt,  struck  straight  up  to  Mon- 
tauban  on  the  right,  captured  it,  and  flung  a  loop  round 
Mametz  village. 

For  the  German  generals,  receiving  their  reports  with 
great  difficulty  because  runners  w^ere  killed  and  telephones 
broken,  the  question  was:  "How  will  these  British  troops 
fight  in  the  open  after  their  first  assault.''  How  will  our 
men  stand  between  the  first  hne  and  the  second  .f*" 

As  far  as  the  German  troops  were  concerned,  there  were 
no  signs  of  cowardice,  or  "  low  morale  "  as  we  called  it  more 
kindly,  in  those  early  days  of  the  struggle.  They  fought 
with  a  desperate  courage,  holding  on  to  positions  in  rear- 
guard actions  when  our  guns  were  slashing  them  and 
when  our  men  were  getting  near  to  them,  making  us  pay 
a  heavy  price  for  every  little  copse  or  gully  or  section  of 
trench,  and  above  all  serving  their  machine-guns  at  La 
Boisselle,  Ovillers,  above  Fricourt,  round  Contalmaison, 
and  at  all  points  of  their  gradual  retreat,  with  a  wonder- 
ful obstinacy,  until  they  were  killed  or  captured.  But 
fresh  waves  of  British  soldiers  followed  those  who  were 
checked  or  broken. 

After  the  first  week  of  battle  the  German  General  Staff 
had  learned  the  truth  about  the  qualities  of  those  British 
"New  Armies"  which  had  been  mocked  and  caricatured 
in  German  comic  papers.  They  learned  that  these  "  ama- 
teur soldiers"  had  the  qualities  of  the  finest  troops  in  the 
world — not  only  extreme  valor,  but  skill  and  cunning,  not 
only  a  great  power  of  endurance  under  the  heaviest  fire, 
but  a  spirit  of  attack  which  was  terrible  in  its  effect. 
They  were  fierce  bayonet  fighters.  Once  having  gained 
a  bit  of  earth  or  a  ruined  village,  nothing  would  budge 
them  unless  they  could  be  blasted  out  by  gun-fire.     Gen- 


420  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

eral  Sixt  von  Ainim  put  down  some  candid  notes  in  his 
report  to  Prince  Rupprecht. 

"The  Enghsh  infantry  shows  great  dash  in  attack,  a 
factor  to  which  immense  confidence  in  its  overwhelming 
artillery  greatly  contributes.  ...  It  has  shown  great 
tenacity  in  defense.  This  was  especially  noticeable  in 
the  case  of  small  parties,  which,  when  once  established 
with  machine-guns  in  the  corner  of  a  wood  or  a  group  of 
houses,  were  very  difficult  to  drive  out." 

The  German  losses  were  piling  up.  The  agony  of  the 
German  troops  under  our  shell-lire  was  reaching  unnatu- 
ral limits  of  torture.  The  early  prisoners  I  saw — Prus- 
sians and  Bavarians  of  the  14th  Reserve  Corps — were 
nerve-broken,  and  told  frightful  stories  of  the  way  in 
which  their  regiments  had  been  cut  to  pieces.  The  Ger- 
man generals  had  to  fill  up  the  gaps,  to  put  new  barriers 
of  men  against  the  waves  of  British  infantry.  They  flung 
new  troops  into  the  line,  called  up  hurriedly  from  reserve 
depots. 

Now,  for  the  first  time,  their  staff-work  showed  signs  of 
disorder  and  demoralization.  When  the  Prussian  Guards 
Reserves  were  brought  up  from  Valenciennes  to  counter- 
attack at  Contalmaison  they  were  sent  on  to  the  battle- 
field without  maps  or  local  guides,  and  walked  straight 
into  our  barrage.  A  whole  battalion  was  cut  to  pieces 
and  many  others  suffered  frightful  things.  Some  of  the 
prisoners  told  me  that  they  had  lost  three-quarters  of 
their  number  in  casualties,  and  our  troops  advanced  over 
heaps  of  killed  and  wounded. 

The  I22d  Bavarian  Regiment  in  Contalmaison  was 
among  those  which  suffered  horribly.  Owing  to  our  cease- 
less gun-fire,  they  could  get  no  food-supplies  and  no  water. 
The  dugouts  were  crowded,  so  that  they  had  to  take  turns 
to  get  into  these  shelters,  and  outside  our  shells  were 
bursting  over  every  yard  of  ground. 

"Those  who  went  outside,"  a  prisoner  told  me,  "were 
killed  or  wounded.  Some  of  them  had  their  heads  blown 
off,  and  some  of  them  their  arms.     But  we  w^ent  on  taking 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  421 

turns  in  the  hole,  although  those  who  went  outside  knew 
that  it  was  their  turn  to  die,  most  likely.  At  last  most  of 
those  who  came  into  the  hole  were  wounded,  some  of 
them  badly,  so  that  we  lay  in  blood,"  That  is  one  little 
picture  in  a  great  panorama  of  bloodshed. 

The  German  command  was  not  thinking  much  about 
the  human  suffering  of  its  troops.  It  was  thinking  of  the 
next  defensive  line  upon  which  they  would  have  to  fall 
back  if  the  pressure  of  the  British  offensive  could  be 
maintained — the  Longueval-Bazentin-Pozieres  line.  It 
was  getting  nervous.  Owing  to  the  enormous  efforts 
made  in  the  Verdun  offensive,  the  supplies  of  am.munition 
were  not  adequate  to  the  enormous  demand. 

The  German  gunners  were  trying  to  compete  with  the 
British  in  continuity  of  bombardments  and  the  shells  were 
running  short.  Guns  were  wearing  out  under  this  inces- 
sant strain,  and  it  was  difficult  to  replace  them.  General 
von  Gallwitz  received  reports  of  *'an  alarmingly  large 
number  of  bursts  in  the  bore,  particularly  in  field-guns." 

General  von  Arnim  complained  that  "reserve  supplies 
of  ammunition  were  only  available  in  very  small  quanti- 
ties." The  German  telephone  system  proved  "totally 
inadequate  in  consequence  of  the  development  which  the 
fighting  took."  The  German  air  service  was  surprisingly 
weak,  and  the  British  airmen  had  established  temporary 
mastery. 

"The  numerical  superiority  of  the  enemy's  airmen," 
noted  General  von  Arnim,  "and  the  fact  that  their 
machines  were  better  made,  became  disagreeably  apparent 
to  us,  particularly  in  their  direction  of  the  enemy's  artil- 
lery fire  and  in  bomb-dropping." 

On  July  15th  the  British  troops  broke  the  German  sec- 
ond line  at  Longueval  and  the  Bazentins,  and  inflicted 
great  losses  upon  the  enemy,  who  fought  with  their  usual 
courage  until  the  British  bayonets  were  among  them. 

A  day  or  two  later  the  fortress  of  Ovillers  fell,  and  the 
remnants  of  the  garrison — one  hundred  and  fifty  strong — 

after  a  desperate  and  gallant  resistance  in  ditches  and 

28 


422  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

tunnels,  where  they  had  fought  to  the  last,  surrendered 
with  honor. 

Then  began  the  long  battle  of  the  woods — Devil's 
Wood,  High  Wood,  Trones  Wood — continued  through 
August  with  most  fierce  and  bloody  fighting,  which  ended 
in  our  favor  and  forced  the  enemy  back,  gradually  but 
steadily,  in  spite  of  the  terrific  bombardments  which  filled 
those  v/oods  with  shell-fire  and  the  constant  counter- 
attacks delivered  by  the  Germans. 

"Counter-attack!"  came  the  order  from  the  German 
staff,  and  battalions  of  men  marched  out  obediently  to 
certain  death,  sometimes  with  incredible  folly  on  the  part 
of  their  commanding  oflicers,  who  ordered  these  attacks 
to  be  made  without  the  slightest  chance  of  success. 

I  saw  an  example  of  that  at  close  range  during  a  battle 
at  Falfemont  Farm,  near  Guillemont.  Our  men  had  ad- 
vanced from  Wedge  Wood,  and  I  watched  them  from  a 
trench  just  south  of  this,  to  which  I  had  gone  at  a  great 
pace  over  shell-craters  and  broken  wire,  with  a  young 
observing  officer  who  had  been  detailed  to  report  back  to 
the  guns.  (Old  "Falstaff,"  whose  songs  and  stories  had 
filled  the  tent  under  the  Red  Cross  with  laughter,  toiled 
after  us  gallantly,  but  grunting  and  sweating  under  the 
sun  like  his  prototype,  until  we  lost  him  in  our  hurry.) 
Presently  a  body  of  Germans  came  out  of  a  copse  called 
Leuze  Wood,  on  rising  ground,  faced  round  among 
the  thin,  slashed  trees  of  Falfemont,  and  advanced 
toward  our  men,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  like  a  solid  bar. 
It  was  sheer  suicide.  I  saw  our  men  get  their  machine- 
guns  into  action,  and  the  right  side  of  the  living  bar 
frittered  away,  and  then  the  whole  line  fell  into  the 
scorched  grass.  Another  line  followed.  They  were  tall 
men,  and  did  not  falter  as  they  came  forward,  but  it 
seemed  to  me  they  walked  like  men  conscious  of  going  to 
death.  They  died.  The  simile  is  outworn,  but  it  was 
exactly  as  though  some  invisible  scythe  had  mown  them 
down. 

In  all  the  letters  written  during  those  weeks  of  fighting 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  423 

and  captured  by  us  from  dead  or  living  men  there  was  one 
cry  of  agony  and  horror. 

"I  stood  on  the  brink  of  the  most  terrible  days  of  my 
life,"  wrote  one  of  them.  "They  were  those  of  the  battle 
of  the  Somme.  It  began  with  a  night  attack  on  August 
13th  and  14th.  The  attack  lasted  till  the  evening  of  the 
1 8th,  when  the  English  wrote  on  our  bodies  in  letters  of 
blood,*- It  is  all  over  with  you.'  A  handful  of  half-mad, 
wretched  creatures,  worn  out  in  body  and  mind,  were  all 
that  was  left  of  a  whole  battalion.  We  were  that  hand- 
ful." 

The  losses  of  many  of  the  German  battalions  were 
staggering  (yet  not  greater  than  our  own),  and  by  the 
middle  of  August  the  morale  of  the  troops  was  severely 
shaken.  The  117th  Division  by  Pozieres  suffered  very 
heavily.  The  nth  Reserve  and  157th  Regiments  each 
lost  nearly  three-quarters  of  their  effectives.  The  9th 
Reserve  Corps  had  also  lost  heavily.  The  9th  Reserve 
Jager  Battalion  lost  about  three-quarters,  the  84th  Re- 
serve and  86th  Reserve  over  half.  On  August  loth  the 
i6th  Division  had  six  battalions  in  reserve. 

By  August  19th,  owing  to  the  large  number  of  casual- 
ties, the  greater  part  of  those  reserves  had  been  absorbed 
into  the  front  and  support  trenches,  leaving  as  available 
reserves  two  exhausted  battalions. 

The  weakness  of  the  division  and  the  absolute  necessity 
of  reinforcing  it  led  to  the  15th  Reserve  Infantry  Regi- 
ment (2d  Guards  Division)  being  brought  up  to  strengthen 
the  right  flank  in  the  Leipzig  salient.  This  regiment  had 
suffered  casualties  to  the  extent  of  over  50  per  cent, 
west  of  Pozieres  during  the  middle  of  Jul}^,  and  showed 
no  eagerness  to  return  to  the  fight.  These  are  but  a  few 
examples  of  what  was  happening  along  the  whole  of  the 
German  front  on  the  Somme. 

It  became  apparent  by  the  end  of  August  that  the  enemy 
was  in  trouble  to  find  fresh  troops  to  relieve  his  exhausted 
divisions,  and  that  the  wastage  was  faster  than  the  arrival 
of  new^  men.     It  was  noticeable  that  he  left  divisions  in 


424  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  line  until  incapable  of  further  effort  rather  than  re- 
lieving them  earlier  so  that  after  resting  they  might  again 
be  brought  on  to  the  battlefield.  The  only  conclusion 
to  be  drawn  from  this  was  that  the  enemy  had  not  suffi- 
cient formations  available  to  make  the  necessary  reliefs. 

In  July  three  of  these  exhausted  divisions  were  sent  to 
the  east,  their  place  being  taken  by  two  new  divisions, 
and  in  August  three  more  exhausted  divisions  were  sent 
to  Russia,  eight  new  divisions  coming  to  the  Somme 
front.  The  British  and  French  offensive  was  drawing 
in  all  the  German  reserves  and  draining  them  of  their 
life's  blood. 

"We  entrained  at  Savigny,"  wrote  a  man  of  one  of 
these  regiments,  "and  at  once  knew  our  destination.  It 
was  our  old  blood-bath — the  Somme." 

In  many  letters  this  phrase  was  used.  The  Somme 
was  called  the  "Bath  of  Blood"  by  the  German  troops 
who  waded  across  its  shell-craters  and  in  the  ditches 
which  were  heaped  with  their  dead.  But  what  I  have 
described  is  only  the  beginning  of  the  battle,  and  the  bath 
was  to  be  filled  deeper  in  the  months  that  followed. 

XXI 

The  name  (that  "blood-bath")  and  the  news  of  battle 
could  not  be  hidden  from  the  people  of  Germany,  who 
had  already  been  chilled  with  horror  by  the  losses  at 
Verdun,  nor  from  the  soldiers  of  reserve  regiments  quar- 
tered in  trench  and  Belgian  towns  like  Valenciennes, 
St.-Ouentin,  Cambrai,  Lille,  Bruges,  and  as  far  back  as 
Brussels,  waiting  to  go  to  the  front,  nor  from  the  civil 
population  of  those  towns,  held  for  two  years  by  their 
enemy — these  blond  young  men  who  lived  in  their  houses, 
marched  down  their  streets,  and  made  love  to  their 
women. 

The  new^s  was  brought  down  from  the  Somme  front  by 
Red  Cross  trains,  arriving  in  endless  succession,  and 
packed  with  maimed  and  mangled  men.     German  mili- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  425 

tary  policemen  formed  cordons  round  the  railway  sta- 
tions, pushed  back  civilians  who  came  to  stare  with  som- 
ber eyes  at  these  blanketed  bundles  of  living  flesh,  but 
when  the  ambulances  rumbled  through  the  streets  toward 
the  hospitals — long  processions  of  them,  with  the  soles  of 
men's  boots  turned  up  over  the  stretchers  on  which  they 
lay  quiet  and  stiff — the  tale  was  told,  though  no  word  was 
spoken. 

The  tale  of  defeat,  of  great  losses,  of  grave  and  increas- 
ing anxiety,  was  told  clearly  enough — as  I  read  in  capt- 
ured letters— by  the  faces  of  German  officers  who  went 
about  in  these  towns  behind  the  lines  with  gloomy  looks, 
and  whose  tempers,  never  of  the  sweetest,  became  irri- 
table and  unbearable,  so  that  the  soldiers  hated  them  for 
all  this  cursing  and  bullying.  A  certain  battalion  com- 
mander had  a  nervous  breakdown  because  he  had  to  meet 
his  colonel  in  the  morning. 

"He  is  dying  with  fear  and  anxiety,"  wrote  one  of  his 
comrades. 

Other  men,  not  battalion  commanders,  were  even  more 
afraid  of  their  superior  officers,  upon  whom  this  bad  news 
from  the  Somme  had  an  evil  effect. 

The  bad  news  was  spread  by  divisions  taken  out  of  the 
line  and  sent  back  to  rest.  The  men  reported  that  their 
battalions  had  been  cut  to  pieces.  Some  of  their  regi- 
ments had  lost  three-quarters  of  their  strength.  They 
described  the  frightful  effect  of  the  British  artillery — the 
smashed  trenches,  the  shell-crater,  the  horror. 

It  was  not  good  for  the  morale  of  men  who  were  just 
going  up  there  to  take  their  turn. 

The  man  who  was  afraid  of  his  colonel  **sits  all  day 
long  writing  home,  with  the  picture  of  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren before  his  eyes."     He  was  afraid  of  other  things. 

Bavarian  soldiers  quarreled  with  Prussians,  accused 
them  (unjustly)  of  shirking  the  Somme  battlefields  and 
leaving  the  Bavarians  to  go  to  the  blood-bath. 

"All  the  Bavarian  troops  are  being  sent  to  the  Somme 
(this  much  is  certain,  you  can  see  no  Prussians  there), 


426  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

and  this  in  spite  of  the  losses  the  1st  Bavarian  Corps 
suffered  recently  at  Verdun!  And  how  we  did  suffer! 
...  It  appears  that  we  are  in  for  another  turn — at  least 
the  5th  Bavarian  Division.  Everybody  has  been  talking 
about  it  for  a  long  time.  To  the  devil  with  it!  Every 
Bavarian  regiment  is  being  sent  into  it,  and  it's  a 
swindle." 

It  was  in  no  cheerful  mood  that  men  went  away  to  the 
Somme  battlefields.  Those  battaUons  of  gray-clad  men 
entrained  without  any  of  the  old  enthusiasm  with  which 
they  had  gone  to  earlier  battles.  Their  gloom  was 
noticed  by  the  officers. 

"Sing,  you  sheeps'  heads,  sing!"  they  shouted. 

They  were  compelled  to  sing,  by  order. 

"In  the  afternoon,"  wrote  a  man  of  the  i8th  Reserve 
Division,  "we  had  to  go  out  again;  we  were  to  learn  to 
sing.  The  greater  part  did  not  join  in,  and  the  song 
went  feebly.  Then  we  had  to  march  round  in  a  circle 
and  sing,  and  that  went  no  better.  After  that  we  had 
an  hour  off,  and  on  the  way  back  to  billets  we  were  to 
sing  'Deutschland  iiber  Alles,'  but  this  broke  down  com- 
pletely. One  never  hears  songs  of  the  Fatherland  any 
more." 

They  were  silent,  grave-eyed  men  who  marched  through 
the  streets  of  French  and  Belgian  towns  to  be  entrained 
for  the  Somme  front,  for  they  had  forebodings  of  the  fate 
before  them.  Yet  none  of  their  forebodings  were  equal 
in  intensity  of  fear  to  the  frightful  reality  into  which 
they  were  flung. 

The  journey  to  the  Somme  front,  on  the  German  side, 
was  a  way  of  terror,  ugliness,  and  death.  Not  all  the 
imagination  of  morbid  minds  searching  obscenely  for  foul- 
ness and  blood  in  the  great,  deep  pits  of  human  agony 
could  surpass  these  scenes  along  the  way  to  the  German 
lines  round  Courcelette  and  Flers,  Gueudecourt,  Morval, 
and  Lesboeufs. 

Many  times,  long  before  a  German  battalion  had 
arrived  near  the  trenches,  it  was  but  a  collection  of  nerve- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  427 

broken  men  bemoaning  losses  already  suffered  far  behind 
the  lines  and  filled  with  hideous  apprehension.  For 
British  long-range  guns  were  hurling  high  explosives  into 
distant  villages,  barraging  crossroads,  reaching  out  to 
rail-heads  and  ammunition-dumps,  while  British  airmen 
were  on  bombing  flights  over  railway  stations  and  rest- 
billets  and  highroads  down  which  the  German  troops 
came  marching  at  Cambrai,  Bapaume,  in  the  valley  be- 
tween Irles  and  Warlencourt,  at  Ligny-Thilloy,  Busigny, 
and  many  other  places  on  the  lines  of  route. 

German  soldiers  arriving  one  morning  at  Cambrai  by 
train  found  themselves  under  the  fire  of  a  single  airplane 
which  flew  very  low  and  dropped  bombs.  They  exploded 
with  heavy  crashes,  and  one  bomb  hit  the  first  carriage 
behind  the  engine,  killing  and  wounding  several  men.  A 
second  bomb  hit  the  station  buildings,  and  there  was  a 
clatter  of  broken  glass,  the  rending  of  wood,  and  the  fall 
of  bricks.  All  lights  went  out,  and  the  German  soldiers 
groped  about  in  the  darkness  amid  the  splinters  of  glass 
and  the  fallen  bricks,  searching  for  the  wounded  by  the 
sound  of  their  groans.  It  was  but  one  scene  along  the 
way  to  that  blood-bath  through  which  they  had  to  wade 
to  the  trenches  of  the  Somme. 

Flights  of  British  airplanes  circled  over  the  villages  on 
the  way.  At  Grevilliers,  in  August,  eleven  1 12-16  bombs 
fell  in  the  market  square,  so  that  the  center  of  the  village 
collapsed  in  a  state  of  ruin,  burying  soldiers  billeted  there. 
Every  day  the  British  airmen  paid  these  visits,  meeting 
the  Germans  far  up  the  roads  on  their  way  to  the  Somme, 
and  swooping  over  them  like  a  flying  death.  Even  on 
the  march  in  open  country  the  German  soldiers  tramping 
silently  along — not  singing  in  spite  of  orders — were 
bombed  and  shot  at  by  these  British  aviators,  who  flew 
down  very  low,  pouring  out  streams  of  machine-gun  bul- 
lets. The  Germans  lost  their  nerve  at  such  times,  and 
scattered  into  the  ditches,  faUing  over  one  another,  struck 
and  cursed  by  their  Unteroffiziereny  and  leaving  their  dead 
and  wounded  in  the  roadway. 


428  NOW  TT  CAN   BE  TOT.D 

As  the  roads  went  nearer  to  the  battlefields  they  were 
choked  with  the  traffic  of  war,  with  artillery  and  trans- 
port wagons  and  horse  ambulances,  and  always  thousands 
of  gray  men  marching  up  to  the  lines,  or  back  from  them, 
exhausted  and  broken  after  many  days  in  the  fires  of  hell 
up  there.  Officers  sat  on  their  horses  by  the  roadside, 
directing  all  the  traffic  with  the  usual  swearing  and  curs- 
ing, and  rode  alongside  the  transport  wagons  and  the 
troops,  urging  them  forward  at  a  quicker  pace  because 
of  stern  orders  received  from  headquarters  demanding 
quicker  movement.  The  reserves,  it  seemed,  were  des- 
perately wanted  up  in  the  lines.  The  English  were 
attacking  again.  .  .  .  God  alone  knew  what  was  happening. 
Regiments  had  lost  their  way.  Wounded  were  pouring 
back.  Officers  had  gone  mad.  Into  the  midst  of  all  th's 
turmoil  shells  fell — shells  from  long-range  guns.  Trans- 
port wagons  were  blown  to  bits.  The  bodies  and  frag- 
ments of  artillery  horses  lay  all  over  the  roads.  Men  lay 
dead  or  bleeding  under  the  debris  of  gun-wheels  and 
broken  bricks.  Above  all  the  noise  of  this  confusion  and 
death  in  the  night  the  hard,  stern  voices  of  German  officers 
rang  out,  and  German  discipline  prevailed,  and  men 
marched  on  to  greater  perils. 

They  were  in  the  shell-zone  now,  and  sometimes  a  regi- 
ment on  the  march  was  tracked  all  along  the  way  by 
British  gun-fire  directed  from  airplanes  and  captive  bal- 
loons. It  was  the  fate  of  a  captured  officer  I  met  who 
had  detrained  at  Bapaume  for  the  trenches  at  Contal- 
maison. 

At  Bapaume  his  battalion  was  hit  by  fragments  of 
twelve-inch  shells.  Nearer  to  the  line  they  came  under 
the  fire  of  eight-inch  and  six-inch  shells.  Eour-point- 
sevens  (4.7's)  found  them  somewhere  by  Bazentin.  At 
Contalmaison  they  marched  into  a  barrage,  and  here  the 
officer  was  taken  prisoner.  Of  his  battalion  there  were 
few  men  left. 

It  was  so  with  the  3d  Jager  Battalion,  ordered  up  hur- 
riedly to  make  a  counter-attack  near  Flcrs.     They  suf- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  429 

fered  so  heavily  on  the  way  to  the  trenches  that  no  attack 
could  be  made.  The  stretcher-bearers  had  all  the  work 
to  do. 

The  way  up  to  the  trenches  became  more  tragic  as  every 
kilometer  was  passed,  until  the  stench  of  corruption  was 
wafted  on  the  wind,  so  that  men  were  sickened,  and  tried 
not  to  breathe,  and  marched  hurriedly  to  get  on  the  lee 
side  of  its  foulness.  They  walked  now  through  places 
which  had  once  been  villages,  but  were  sinister  ruins 
where  death  lay  in  wait  for  German  soldiers. 

"It  seems  queer  to  me,"  wrote  one  of  them,  "that 
whole  villages  close  to  the  front  look  as  flattened  as  a 
child's  toy  run  over  by  a  steam-roller.  Not  one  stone 
remains  on  another.  The  streets  are  one  line  of  shell- 
holes.  Add  to  that  the  thunder  of  the  guns,  and  you  will 
see  with  what  feeHngs  we  come  into  the  line — into  trenches 
where  for  months  shells  of  all  cahber  have  rained.  .  .  . 
Flers  is  a  scrap  heap." 

Again  and  again  men  lost  their  way  up  to  the  lines. 
The  rehefs  could  only  be  made  at  night  lest  they  should 
be  discovered  by  British  airmen  and  British  gunners, 
and  even  if  these  German  soldiers  had  trench  maps  the 
guidance  was  but  little  good  when  many  trenches  had 
been  smashed  in  and  only  shell-craters  could  be  found. 

"In  the  front  line  of  Flers,"  wrote  one  of  these  Germans, 
"the  men  were  only  occupying  shell-holes.  Behind  there 
was  the  intense  smell  of  putrefaction  which  filled  the 
trench — almost  unbearably.  The  corpses  lie  either  quite 
insufficiently  covered  with  earth  on  the  edge  of  the  trench 
or  quite  close  under  the  bottom  of  the  trench,  so  that  the 
earth  lets  the  stench  through.  In  some  places  bodies  lie 
quite  uncovered  in  a  trench  recess,  and  no  one  seems  to 
trouble  about  them.  One  sees  horrible  pictures — here 
an  arm,  here  a  foot,  here  a  head,  sticking  out  of  the  earth. 
And  these  are  all  German  soldiers — heroes! 

"Not  far  from  us,  at  the  entrance  to  a  dugout,  nine 
men  were  buried,  of  whom  three  were  dead.  All  along 
the  trench  men  kept  on  getting  buried.     What  had  been 


430  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

a  perfect  trench  a  few  hours  before  was  in  parts  com- 
pletely blown  in.  .  .  .  The  men  are  getting  weaker.  It  is 
impossible  to  hold  out  any  longer.  Losses  can  no  longer 
be  reckoned  accurately.  Without  a  doubt  many  of  our 
people  are  killed." 

That  is  only  one  out  of  thousands  of  such  gruesome 
pictures,  true  as  the  death  they  described,  true  to  the 
pictures  on  our  side  of  the  line  as  on  their  side,  which  went 
back  to  German  homes  during  the  battles  of  the  Somme. 
Those  German  soldiers  were  great  letter-writers,  and  men 
sitting  in  wet  ditches,  in  *' fox-holes,"  as  they  called  their 
dugouts,  "up  to  my  waist  in  mud,"  as  one  of  them  de- 
scribed, scribbled  pitiful  things  which  they  hoped  might 
reach  their  people  at  home,  as  a  voice  from  the  dead. 
For  they  had  had  little  hope  of  escape  from  the  blood- 
bath. "When  you  get  this  I  shall  be  a  corpse,"  wrote 
one  of  them,  and  one  finds  the  same  foreboding  in  many 
of  these  documents. 

Even  the  lucky  ones  who  could  get  some  cover  from  the 
incessant  bombardment  by  English  guns  began  to  lose 
their  nerves  after  a  day  or  two.  They  were  always  in 
fear  of  British  infantry  sweeping  upon  them  suddenly 
behind  the  Trommelfeuer^  rushing  their  dugouts  with 
bombs  and  bayonets.  Sentries  became  "jumpy,"  and 
signaled  attacks  when  there  were  no  attacks.  The  gas- 
alarm  was  sounded  constantly  by  the  clang  of  a  bell  in 
the  trench,  and  men  put  on  their  heavy  gas-masks  and 
sat  in  them  until  they  were  nearly  stifled. 

Here  is  a  little  picture  of  life  in  a  German  dugout  near 
the  British  lines,  written  by  a  man  now  dead: 

"The  telephone  bell  rings.  'Are  you  there.''  Yes, 
here's  Nau's  battahon.'  *Good.  That  is  all.'  Then  that 
ceases,  and  now  the  wire  is  in  again  perhaps  for  the 
twenty-fifth  or  thirtieth  time.  Thus  the  night  is  inter- 
rupted, and  now  they  come,  alarm  messages,  one  after 
the  other,  each  more  terrifying  than  the  other,  of  enor- 
mous losses  through  the  bombs  and  shells  of  the  enemy, 
of  huge  masses  of  troops  advancing  upon  us,  of  all  possible 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  431 

possibilities,  such  as  a  train  broken  down,  and  we  are 
tortured  by  all  the  terrors  that  the  mind  can  invent.  Our 
nerves  quiver.  We  clench  our  teeth.  None  of  us  can 
forget  the  horrors  of  the  night." 

Heavy  rain  fell  and  the  dugouts  became  wet  and 
filthy. 

"Our  sleeping-places  were  full  of  water.  We  had  to 
try  and  bail  out  the  trenches  with  cooking-dishes.     I  lay 

down  in  the  water  with  G .    We  were  to  have  worked 

on  dugouts,  but  not  a  soul  could  do  any  more.  Only  a 
few  sections  got  coffee.  Mine  got  nothing  at  all.  I  was 
frozen  in  every  hmb,  poured  the  water  out  of  my  boots, 
and  lay  down  again." 

Our  men  suffered  exactly  the  same  things,  but  did  not 
write  about  them. 

The  German  generals  and  their  staffs  could  not  be  quite 
indifferent  to  all  this  welte  r  of  human  suffering  among  their 
troops,  in  spite  of  the  cold,  scientific  spirit  with  which 
they  regarded  the  problem  of  war.  The  agony  of  the 
individual  soldier  would  not  trouble  them.  There  is  no 
war  without  agony.  But  the  psychology  of  masses  of 
men  had  to  be  considered,  because  it  affects  the  efficiency 
of  the  machine. 

The  German  General  Staff  on  the  western  front  was 
becoming  seriously  alarmed  by  the  decHning  morale  of 
its  infantry  under  the  increasing  strain  of  the  British 
attacks,  and  adopted  stern  measures  to  cure  it.  But  it 
could  not  hope  to  cure  the  heaps  of  German  dead  who 
were  lying  on  the  battlefields,  nor  the  maimed  men  who 
were  being  carried  back  to  the  dressing  stations,  nor  to 
bring  back  the  prisoners  taken  in  droves  by  the  French 
and  British  troops. 

Before  the  attack  on  the  Flers  line,  the  capture  of  Thiep- 
val,  and  the  German  debacle  at  Beaumont  Hamel,  in 
November,  the  enemy's  command  was  already  filled  with 
a  grave  anxiety  at  the  enormous  losses  of  its  fighting 
strength;  was  compelled  to  adopt  new  expedients  for  in- 
creasing the  number  of  its  divisions.     It  was  forced  to 


432  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

withdraw  troops  badly  needed  on  other  fronts,  and  the 
successive  shocks  of  the  British  oflPensive  reached  as  far 
as  Germany  itself,  so  that  the  whole  of  its  recruiting 
system  had  to  be  revised  to  fill  up  the  gaps  torn  out  of 
the  German  ranks. 

XXII 

All  through  July  and  August  the  enemy's  troops  fought 
with  wonderful  and  stubborn  courage,  defending  every 
bit  of  broken  woodland,  every  heap  of  bricks  that  was 
once  a  village,  every  line  of  trenches  smashed  by  heavy 
shell-fire,  with  obstinacy. 

It  is  indeed  fair  and  just  to  say  that  throughout  those 
battles  of  the  Somme  our  men  fought  against  an  enemy 
hard  to  beat,  grim  and  resolute,  and  inspired  sometimes 
with  the  courage  of  despair,  which  was  hardly  less  dan- 
gerous than  the  courage  of  hope. 

The  Australians  who  struggled  to  get  the  high  ground 
at  Pozieres  did  not  have  an  easy  task.  The  enemy  made 
many  counter-attacks  against  them.  All  the  ground 
thereabouts  was,  as  I  have  said,  so  smashed  that  the  earth 
became  finely  powdered,  and  it  was  the  arena  of  bloody 
fighting  at  close  quarters  which  did  not  last  a  day  or  two, 
but  many  weeks.  Mouquet  Farm  was  like  the  phenix 
which  rose  again  out  of  its  ashes.  In  its  tunneled  ways 
German  soldiers  hid  and  came  out  to  fight  our  men  in 
the  rear  long  after  the  site  of  the  farm  was  in  our  hands. 

But  the  German  troops  were  fighting  what  they  knew 
to  be  a  losing  battle.  They  were  fighting  rear-guard 
actions,  trying  to  gain  time  for  the  hasty  digging  of 
ditches  behind  them,  trying  to  sell  their  Hves  at  the 
highest  price. 

They  lived  not  only  under  incessant  gun-fire,  gradually 
weakening  their  nerve-power,  working  a  physical  as  well 
as  a  moral  change  in  them,  but  in  constant  terror  of 
British  attacks. 

They  could  never  be  sure  of  safety  at  any  hour  of  the  day 
or  night,  even  in  their  deepest  dugouts.  The  British  varied 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  433 

their  times  of  attack.  At  dawn,  at  noon,  when  the  sun 
was  reddening  in  the  west,  just  before  the  dusk,  in  pitch 
darkness,  even,  the  steady,  regular  bombardment  that 
had  never  ceased  all  through  the  days  and  nights  would 
concentrate  into  the  great  tumult  of  sudden  drum-fire, 
and  presently  waves  of  men — English  or  Scottish  or  Irish, 
Australians  or  Canadians — would  be  sweeping  on  to  them 
and  over  them,  rummaging  down  into  the  dugouts  with 
bombs  and  bayonets,  gathering  up  prisoners,  quick  to 
kill  if  men  were  not  quick  to  surrender. 

In  this  way  Thiepval  was  encircled  so  that  the  garrison 
there — the  i8oth  Regiment,  who  had  held  it  for  two 
years — knew  that  they  were  doomed.  In  this  way  Guille- 
mont  and  Ginchy  fell,  so  that  in  the  first  place  hardly  a 
man  out  of  two  thousand  men  escaped  to  tell  the  tale  of 
horror  in  German  lines,  and  in  the  second  place  there 
was  no  long  fight  against  the  Irish,  who  stormed  it  in  a 
wild,  fierce  rush  which  even  machine-guns  could  not 
check. 

The  German  General  Staff  was  getting  flurried,  grab- 
bing at  battalions  from  other  parts  of  the  fine,  disorganiz- 
ing its  divisions  under  the  urgent  need  of  flinging  in  men 
to  stop  this  rot  in  the  lines,  ordering  counter-attacks 
which  were  without  any  chance  of  success,  so  that  thin 
waves  of  men  came  out  into  the  open,  as  I  saw  them 
several  times,  to  be  swept  down  by  scythes  of  bullets 
which  cut  them  clean  to  the  earth.  Before  September 
15th  they  hoped  that  the  British  offensive  was  wearing 
itself  out.  It  seemed  to  them  at  least  doubtful  that  after 
the  struggle  of  two  and  a  half  months  the  British  troops 
could  still  have  spirit  and  strength  enough  to  fling  them- 
selves against  new  lines. 

But  the  machinery  of  their  defense  was  crumbling. 
Many  of  their  guns  had  worn  out,  and  could  not  be  re- 
placed quickly  enough.  Many  batteries  had  been  knocked 
out  in  their  emplacements  along  the  line  of  Bazentin  and 
Longueval  before  the  artillery  was  drawn  back  to  Grand- 
court  and  a  new  line  of  safety.     Battalion  commanders 


434  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

clamored  for  greater  supplies  of  hand-grenades,  intrench- 
ing-fools,  trench-mortars,  signal  rockets,  and  all  kinds  of 
fighting  m:iterial  enormously  in  excess  of  all  previous 
re(iuirements. 

"i  he  difliculties  of  dealing  with  tlie  wounded,  who  lit- 
tered the  hattlefiehls  and  choked  the  roads  with  the 
tralHc  of  aml)uhinces,  became  increasingly  severe,  owing 
to  the  dearth  of  horses  for  transport  and  the  longer  range 
of  liritish  guns  which  had  l)een  brought  far  forward. 

The  German  (jeneral  Staff  studied  its  next  lines  of  de- 
fense away  tinough  Courcelette,  Martinpuich,  Lesbceufs, 
IMorval,  and  Combles,  and  they  did  not  look  too  good, 
but  with  luck  and  the  courage  of  German  soldiers,  and 
the  exhaustion — ^surely  those  fellows  were  exhausted! — • 
of  Hritisli  troops     good  enough. 

On  Septend)er  i  i^tli  tlie  German  command  had  another 
shock  when  the  whole  line  of  the  British  troops  on  the 
Sonmie  front  south  of  the  Ancre  rose  out  of  their  trenches 
and  swept  over  the  (jcrman  defenses  in  a  tide. 

rhose  defenses  broke  hopelessly,  and  the  waves  dashed 
through.  Here  and  there,  as  on  the  German  left  at 
Morval  and  Lesb(i-'ufs,  the  bulwarks  stood  for  a  time,  but 
the  British  pressed  against  them  and  round  them.  On 
the  German  right,  below  the  little  river  of  the  Ancre, 
Courcelette  fell,  and  Martinpuich,  and  at  last,  as  I  have 
written.  High  Wood,  which  the  Germans  desired  to  hold 
at  all  costs,  and  had  held  against  incessant  attacks  by 
great  concentration  of  artillery,  was  captured  and  left 
behind  by  the  London  men.  A  new  engine  of  war  had 
come  as  a  demoralizing  influence  among  German  troops, 
spreading  terror  among  them  on  the  first  day  out  of  the 
tanks.  For  the  first  time  the  Germans  were  outwitted 
in  inventions  of  destruction;  they  who  had  been  foremost 
in  all  engines  of  death.  It  was  the  moment  of  real  panic 
in  the  German  lines — a  panic  reaching  back  from  the 
troops  to  the  High  Command. 

Ten  days  later,  on  September  25th,  when  the  British 
made  a  new  advance — all  this  time  the  French  were  press- 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  435 

ing  forward,  too,  on  our  right  by  Roye — Combles  was 
evacuated  without  a  fight  and  with  a  Htter  of  dead  in  its 
streets;  Gueudecourt,  Lesboeufs,  and  Morval  were  lost 
by  the  Germans;  and  a  day  later  Thiepval,  the  greatest 
fortress  position  next  to  Beaumont  Hamel,  fell,  with  all 
its  garrison  taken  prisoners. 

They  were  black  days  in  the  German  headquarters, 
where  staff-officers  heard  the  news  over  their  telephones 
and  sent  stern  orders  to  artillery  commanders  and  divi- 
sional generals,  and  after  dictating  new  instructions  that 
certain  trench  systems  must  be  held  at  whatever  price, 
heard  that  already  they  were  lost. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  the  morale  of  the  German 
troops  on  the  Somme  front  showed  most  signs  of  breaking. 
In  spite  of  all  their  courage,  the  ordeal  had  been  too  hid- 
eous for  them,  and  in  spite  of  all  their  discipline,  the  iron 
discipline  of  the  German  soldier,  they  were  on  the  edge  of 
revolt.  The  intimate  and  undoubted  facts  of  this  break 
in  the  morale  of  the  enemy's  troops  during  this  period 
reveal  a  pitiful  picture  of  human  agony. 

"We  are  now  fighting  on  the  Somme  with  the  English," 
wrote  a  man  of  the  17th  Bavarian  Regiment.  "You  can 
no  longer  call  it  war.  It  is  mere  murder.  We  are  at  the 
focal-point  of  the  present  battle  in  Foureaux  Wood  (near 
Guillemont).  All  my  previous  experiences  in  this  war — 
the  slaughter  at  Ypres  and  the  battle  in  the  gravel-pit  at 
Hulluch — are  the  purest  child's  play  compared  with  this 
massacre,  and  that  is  much  too  mild  a  description.  I 
hardly  think  they  will  bring  us  into  the  fight  again,  for  we 
are  in  a  very  bad  way." 

"  From  September  12th  to  27th  we  were  on  the  Somme," 
wrote  a  man  of  the  loth  Bavarians,  "and  my  regiment 
had  fifteen  hundred  casualties." 

A  detailed  picture  of  the  German  losses  under  our  bom- 
bardment was  given  in  the  diary  of  an  officer  captured  in 
a  trench  near  Flers,  and  dated  September  22d. 

"The  four  days  ending  September  4th,  spent  in  the 
trenches,  were  characterized  by  a  continual  enemy  bom- 


436  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

bardment  that  did  not  abate  for  a  single  instant.  The 
enemy  had  registered  on  our  trenches  with  Hght,  as  well 
as  medium  and  heavy,  batteries,  notwithstanding  that  he 
had  no  direct  observation  from  his  trenches,  which  lie 
on  the  other  side  of  the  summit.  His  registering  was  done 
by  his  excellent  air  service,  which  renders  perfect  reports 
of  everything  observed. 

"During  the  first  day,  for  instance,  whenever  the 
slightest  movement  was  visible  in  our  trenches  during 
the  presence,  as  is  usually  the  case,  of  enemy  aircraft 
flying  as  low  as  three  and  four  hundred  yards,  a  heavy 
bombardment  of  the  particular  section  took  place.  The 
very  heavy  losses  during  the  first  day  brought  about  the 
resolution  to  evacuate  the  trenches  during  the  daytime. 
Only  a  small  garrison  was  left,  the  remainder  withdraw- 
ing to  a  part  of  the  line  on  the  left  of  the  Martinpuich- 
Pozieres  road. 

"The  signal  for  a  bombardment  by  Mieavies*  was  given 
by  the  English  airplanes.  On  the  first  day  we  tried  to 
fire  by  platoons  on  the  airplanes,  but  a  second  airplane 
retaliated  by  dropping  bombs  and  firing  his  machine-gun 
at  our  troops.  Our  own  airmen  appeared  only  once  for 
a  short  time  behind  our  lines. 

"While  many  airplanes  are  observing  from  early  morn- 
ing till  late  at  night,  our  own  hardly  ever  venture  near. 
The  opinion  is  that  our  trenches  cannot  protect  troops 
during  a  barrage  of  the  shortest  duration,  owing  to  lack 
of  dugouts. 

"The  enemy  understands  how  to  prevent,  with  his 
terrible  barrage,  the  bringing  up  of  building  material,  and 
even  how  to  hinder  the  work  itself.  The  consequence  is 
that  our  trenches  are  always  ready  for  an  assault  on  his 
part.  Our  artillery,  which  does  occasionally  put  a  heavy 
barrage  on  the  enemy  trenches  at  a  great  expense  of  am- 
munition, cannot  cause  similar  destruction  to  him.  He 
can  bring  his  building  material  up,  can  repair  his  trenches 
as  well  as  build  new  ones,  can  bring  up  rations  and  am- 
munition, and  remove  the  wounded. 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  437 

**The  continual  barrage  on  our  lines  of  communication 
makes  it  very  difficult  for  us  to  ration  and  relieve  our 
troops,  to  supply  water,  ammunition,  and  building  mate- 
rial, to  evacuate  wounded,  and  causes  heavy  losses.  This 
and  the  lack  of  protection  from  artillery  fire  and  the 
weather,  the  lack  of  hot  meals,  the  continual  necessity  of 
lying  still  in  the  same  place,  the  danger  of  being  buried, 
the  long  time  the  wounded  have  to  remain  in  the  trenches, 
and  chiefly  the  terrible  effect  of  the  machine-  and  heavy- 
artillery  fire,  controlled  by  an  excellent  air  service,  has  a 
most  demoralizing  effect  on  the  troops. 

**Only  with  the  greatest  difficulty  could  the  men  be 
persuaded  to  stay  in  the  trenches  under  those  conditions." 

There  were  some  who  could  not  be  persuaded  to  stay 
if  they  could  see  any  chance  of  deserting  or  malingering. 
For  the  first  time  on  our  front  the  German  officers  could 
not  trust  the  courage  of  their  men,  nor  their  loyalty,  nor 
their  sense  of  disciphne.  All  this  horror  of  men  blown  to 
bits  over  living  men,  of  trenches  heaped  with  dead  and 
dying,  was  stronger  than  courage,  stronger  than  loyalty, 
stronger  than  discipline.  A  moral  rot  was  threatening  to 
bring  the  German  troops  on  the  Somme  front  to  disaster. 

Large  numbers  of  men  reported  sick  and  tried  by  every 
kind  of  trick  to  be  sent  back  to  base  hospitals. 

In  the  4th  Bavarian  Division  desertions  were  frequent, 
and  several  times  whole  bodies  of  men  refused  to  go  for- 
ward into  the  front  line.  The  morale  of  men  in  the  393  d 
Regiment,  taken  at  Courcelette,  seemed  to  be  very  weak. 
One  of  the  prisoners  declared  that  they  gave  themselves 
up  without  firing  a  shot,  because  they  could  trust  the 
English  not  to  kill  them. 

The  platoon  commander  had  gone  away,  and  the  pris- 
oner was  ordered  to  alarm  the  platoon  in  case  of  attack, 
but  did  not  do  so  on  purpose.  They  did  not  shoot  with 
rifles  or  machine-guns  and  did  not  throw  bombs. 

Many  of  the  German  officers  were  as  demoralized  as 
the  men,  shirking  their  posts  in  the  trenches,  shamming 
sickness,  and  even  leading  the  way  to  surrender.     Prison- 


438  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

ers  of  the  351st  Regiment,  which  lost  thirteen  hundred 
men  in  fifteen  days,  told  of  officers  who  had  refused  to 
take  their  men  up  to  the  front-line,  and  of  whole  com- 
panies who  had  declined  to  move  when  ordered  to  do  so. 
An  officer  of  the  74th  Landwehr  Regiment  is  said  by 
prisoners  to  have  told  his  men  during  our  preliminary 
bombardment  to  surrender  as  soon  as  we  attacked. 

A  German  regimental  order  says :  "  I  must  state  with  the 
greatest  regret  that  the  regiment,  during  this  change  of 
position,  had  to  take  notice  of  the  sad  fact  that  men  of 
four  of  the  companies,  inspired  by  shameful  cowardice, 
left  their  companies  on  their  own  initiative  and  did  not 
move  into  line." 

Another  order  contains  the  same  fact,  and  a  warning 
of  what  punishment  may  be  meted  out: 

"Proofs  are  multiplying  of  men  leaving  the  position 
without  permission  and  hiding  at  the  rear.  It  is  our  duty 
.  .  .  each  at  his  post — to  deal  with  this  fact  with  energy 
and  success." 

Many  Bavarians  complained  that  their  officers  did  not 
accompany  them  into  the  trenches,  but  went  down  to 
the  hospitals  with  imaginary  diseases.  In  any  case  there 
was  a  great  deal  of  real  sickness,  mental  and  physical. 
The  ranks  were  depleted  by  men  suffering  from  fever, 
pleurisy,  jaundice,  and  stomach  complaints  of  all  kinds, 
twisted  up  with  rheumatism  after  lying  in  waterlogged 
holes,  lamed  for  life  by  bad  cases  of  trench-foot,  and 
nerve-broken  so  that  they  could  do  nothing  but  weep. 

The  nervous  cases  were  the  worst  and  in  greatest 
number.  Many  men  went  raving  mad.  The  shell-shock 
victims  clawed  at  their  mouths  unceasingly,  or  lay  motion- 
less like  corpses  with  staring  eyes,  or  trembled  in  every 
limb,  moaning  miserably  and  afflicted  with  a  great  terror. 

To  the  Germans  (barely  less  to  British  troops)  the 
Somme  battlefields  were  not  only  shambles,  but  a  terri- 
tory which  the  devil  claimed  as  his  own  for  the  torture  of 
men's  brains  and  souls  before  they  died  in  the  furnace 
fires.     A  spirit  of  revolt  against  all  this  crept  into  the 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  439 

minds  of  men  who  retained  their  sanity — a  revolt  against 
the  people  who  had  ordained  this  vast  outrage  against 
God  and  humanity. 

Into  German  letters  there  crept  bitter,  burning  words 
against  "the  millionaires — who  grow  rich  out  of  the  war," 
against  the  high  people  who  live  in  comfort  behind  the 
lines.     Letters  from  home  inflamed  these  thoughts. 

It  was  not  good  reading  for  men  under  shell-fire. 

"It  seems  that  you  soldiers  fight  so  that  official  stay- 
at-homes  can  treat  us  as  female  criminals.  Tell  me,  dear 
husband,  are  you  a  criminal  when  you  fight  in  the 
trenches,  or  why  do  people  treat  women  and  children 
here  as  such?  .  .  . 

"For  the  poor  here  it  is  terrible,  and  yet  the  rich,  the 
gilded  ones,  the  bloated  aristocrats,  gobble  up  everything 
in  front  of  our  very  eyes.  .  .  .  All  soldiers — friend  and  foe — 
ought  to  throw  down  their  weapons  and  go  on  strike,  so 
that  this  war  which  enslaves  the  people  more  than  ever 
may  cease." 

Thousands  of  letters,  all  in  this  strain,  were  reaching 
the  German  soldiers  on  the  Somme,  and  they  did  not 
strengthen  the  morale  of  men  already  victims  of  terror 
and  despair. 

•Behind  the  lines  deserters  were  shot  in  batches.  To 
those  in  front  came  Orders  of  the  Day  warning  them,  ex- 
horting them,  commanding  them  to  hold  fast. 

"To  the  hesitating  and  faint-hearted  in  the  regiment," 
says  one  of  these  Orders,  "I  would  say  the  following: 

"What  the  Englishman  can  do  the  German  can  do  also. 
Or  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Englishman  really  is  a  better 
and  superior  being,  he  would  be  quite  justified  in  his  aim 
as  regards  this  war,  viz.,  the  extermination  of  the  German. 
There  is  a  further  point  to  be  noted:  this  is  the  first  time 
we  have  been  in  the  line  on  the  Somme,  and  what  is  more, 
we  are  there  at  a  time  when  things  are  more  calm.  The 
English  regiments  opposing  us  have  been  in  the  firing-Hne 
for  the  second,  and  in  some  cases  even  the  third,  time. 
Heads  up  and  play  the  man!" 


440  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

It  was  easy  to  write  such  documents.  It  was  more 
difficult  to  bring  up  reserves  of  men  and  ammunition. 
The  German  command  was  harder  pressed  by  the  end  of 
September. 

From  July  ist  to  September  8th,  according  to  trust- 
worthy information,  fifty-three  German  divisions  in  all 
were  engaged  against  the  Allies  on  the  Somme  battle- 
front.  Out  of  these  fourteen  were  still  in  the  line  on 
September  8th. 

Twenty-eight  had  been  withdrawn,  broken  and  ex- 
hausted, to  quieter  areas.  Eleven  more  had  been  with- 
drawn to  rest-billets.  Under  the  Allies'  artillery  fire  and 
infantry  attacks  the  average  life  of  a  German  division  as 
a  unit  fit  for  service  on  the  Somme  was  nineteen  days. 
More  than  two  new  German  divisions  had  to  be  brought 
into  the  front-line  every  week  since  the  end  of  June,  to 
replace  those  smashed  in  the  process  of  resisting  the 
Allied  attack.  In  November  it  was  reckoned  by  com- 
petent observers  in  the  field  that  well  over  one  hundred 
and  twenty  German  divisions  had  been  passed  through 
the  ordeal  of  the  Somme,  this  number  including  those 
which  have  appeared  there  more  than  once. 

XXIII 

By  September  25th,  when  the  British  troops  made 
another  attack,  the  morale  of  the  German  troops  was 
reaching  its  lowest  ebb.  Except  on  their  right,  at  Beau- 
mont Hamel  and  Beaucourt,  they  were  far  beyond  the 
great  system  of  protective  dugouts  which  had  given  them 
a  sense  of  safety  before  July  1st.  Their  second  and  third 
lines  of  defense  had  been  carried,  and  they  were  existing 
in  shell-craters  and  trenches  hastily  scraped  up  under 
ceaseless  artillery  fire. 

The  horrors  of  the  battlefield  were  piled  up  to  heights 
of  agony  and  terror.  Living  men  dwelt  among  the  un- 
buried  dead,  made  their  way  to  the  front-lines  over  heaps 
of  corpses,  breathed  in  the  smell  of  human  corruption, 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE   SOMME  441 

and  had  always  in  their  ears  the  cries  of  the  wounded  they 
could  not  rescue.  They  wrote  these  things  in  tragi'^ 
letters — thousands  of  them — which  never  reached  their 
homes  in  Germany,  but  lay  in  their  captured  ditches. 

"The  number  of  dead  lying  about  is  awful.  One 
stumbles  over  them." 

"The  stench  of  the  dead  lying  round  us  is  un- 
bearable." 

"We   are   no   longer   men   here.     We   are  worse  than 

"It  is  hell  let  loose."  .  .  .  "It  is  horrible."  .  .  .  "We've 
lived  in  misery." 

"If  the  dear  ones  at  home  could  see  all  this  perhaps 
there  would  be  a  change.     But  they  are  never  told." 

"The  ceaseless  roar  of  the  guns  is  driving  us  mad." 

Poor,  pitiful  letters,  out  of  their  cries  of  agony  one  gets 
to  the  real  truth  of  war — the  "glory"  and  the  "splendor" 
of  it  preached  by  the  German  philosophers  and  British 
Jingoes,  who  upheld  it  as  the  great  strengthening  tonic 
for  their  race,  and  as  the  noblest  experience  of  men. 
Every  line  these  German  soldiers  wrote  might  have 
been  written  by  one  of  ours;  from  both  sides  of  the 
shifting  Hnes  there  was  the  same  death  and  the  same 
hell. 

Behind  the  lines  the  German  General  Staff,  counting 
up  the  losses  of  battalions  and  divisions  who  staggered  out 
weakly,  performed  juggling  tricks  with  what  reserves  it 
could  lay  its  hands  on,  and  flung  up  stray  units  to  re- 
lieve the  poor  wretches  in  the  trenches.  Many  of  those 
reliefs  lost  their  way  in  going  up,  and  came  up  late, 
already  shattered  by  the  shell-fire  through  which  they 
passed. 

"Our  position,"  wrote  a  German  infantry  officer,  "was, 
of  course,  quite  different  from  what  we  had  been  told. 
Our  company  alone  relieved  a  whole  battalion.  We  had 
been  told  we  were  to  relieve  a  company  of  fifty  men 
weakened  by  casualties. 

"The  men  we  relieved  had  no  idea  where  the  enemy 


442  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

was,  how  far  off  he  was,  or  whether  any  of  our  own 
troops  were  in  front  of  us.  We  got  no  idea  of  our 
support  position  until  six  o'clock  this  evening.  The 
EngHsh  are  four  hundred  yards  away,  by  the  windmill 
over  the  hill." 

One  German  soldier  wrote  that  the  British  "seem  to 
relieve  their  infantry  very  quickly,  while  the  German 
commands  work  on  the  principle  of  relieving  only  in  the 
direst  need,  and  leaving  the  divisions  in  as  long  as 
possible." 

Another  wrote  that: 

"The  leadership  of  the  divisions  really  fell  through. 
For  the  most  part  we  did  not  get  orders,  and  the  regiment 
had  to  manage  as  best  it  could.  If  orders  arrived  they 
generally  came  too  late  or  were  dealt  out  'from  the  green 
table'  without  knowledge  of  the  conditions  in  front,  so 
that  to  carry  them  out  was  impossible." 

All  this  was  a  sign  of  demoralization,  not  only  among  the 
troops  who  were  doing  the  fighting  and  the  suffering,  but 
among  the  organizing  generals  behind,  who  were  direct- 
ing the  operations.  The  continual  hammer-strokes  of 
the  British  and  French  armies  on  the  Somme  battlefields 
strained  the  German  war-machine  on  the  western  front 
almost  to  breaking-point. 

It  seemed  as  though  a  real  debacle  might  happen,  and 
that  they  would  be  forced  to  effect  a  general  retreat — a 
withdrawal  more  or  less  at  ease  or  a  retirement  under 
pressure  from  the  enemy.  .  .  . 

But  they  had  luck — astonishing  luck.  At  the  very 
time  when  the  morale  of  the  German  soldiers  was  lowest 
and  when  the  strain  on  the  High  Command  was  greatest 
the  weather  turned  in  their  favor  and  gave  them  just 
the  breathing-space  they  desperately  needed.  Rain  fell 
heavily  in  the  middle  of  October,  autumn  mists  prevented 
airplane  activity  and  artillery-work,  and  the  ground  be- 
came a  quagmire,  so  that  the  British  troops  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  get  up  their  supplies  for  a  new  advance. 

The  Germans  were  able  in  this  respite  to  bring  up  new 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  443 

divisions,  fresh  and  strong  enough  to  make  heavy  counter- 
attacks in  the  Stuff  and  Schwaben  and  Regina  trenches, 
and  to  hold  the  hnes  more  securely  for  a  time,  while  great 
digging  was  done  farther  back  at  Bapaume  and  the  next 
line  of  defense.  Successive  weeks  of  bad  weather  and  our 
own  tragic  losses  checked  the  impetus  of  the  British  and 
French  driving  power,  and  the  Germans  were  able  to 
reorganize  and  reform. 

As  I  have  said,  the  shock  of  our  offensive  reached  as 
far  as  Germany,  and  caused  a  complete  reorganization 
in  the  system  of  obtaining  reserves  of  man-power.  The 
process  of  "combing  out,"  as  we  call  it,  was  pursued  with 
astounding  ruthlessness,  and  German  mothers,  already 
stricken  with  the  loss  of  their  elder  sons,  raised  cries  of 
despair  when  the  youngest  born  were  also  seized — boys  of 
eighteen  belonging  to  the  1918  class. 

The  whole  of  the  1917  class  had  joined  the  depots  in 
March  and  May  of  this  year,  receiving  a  three  months' 
training  before  being  transferred  to  the  field-recruit  de- 
pots in  June  and  July.  About  the  middle  of  July  the  first 
large  drafts  joined  their  units  and  made  their  appearance 
at  the  front,  and  soon  after  the  beginning  of  our  offensive 
at  least  half  this  class  was  in  the  front-line  regiments. 
The  massacre  of  the  boys  had  begun. 

Then  older  men,  men  beyond  middle  age,  who  corre- 
spond to  the  French  Territorial  class,  exempted  from 
fighting  service  and  kept  on  lines  of  communication,  were 
also  called  to  the  front,  and  whole  garrisons  of  these  gray 
heads  were  removed  from  German  towns  to  fill  up  the 
ranks. 

"The  view  is  held  here,"  wrote  a  German  soldier  of  the 
Somme,  "that  the  Higher  Command  intends  gradually 
to  have  more  and  more  Landsturm  battalions  (men  of 
the  oldest  reserves)  trained  in  trench  warfare  for  a  few 
weeks,  as  we  have  been,  according  to  the  quality  of  the 
men,  and  thus  to  secure  by  degrees  a  body  of  troops  on 
which  it  can  count  in  an  emergency." 

In  the  month  of  November  the  German  High  Com- 


444  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

mand  believed  that  the  British  attacks  were  definitely  at 
an  end,  "having  broken  down,"  as  they  claimed,  "in 
mud  and  blood,"  but  another  shock  came  to  them  when 
once  more  British  troops — the  51st  Highland  Division 
and  the  63d  Naval  Division — left  their  trenches,  in  fog 
and  snow,  and  captured  the  strongest  fortress  position 
on  the  enemy's  front,  at  Beaumont  Hamel,  bringing  back 
over  six  thousand  prisoners.  It  was  after  that  they  began 
their  retreat. 

These  studies  of  mine,  of  what  happened  on  both  sides 
of  the  shifting  lines  in  the  Somme,  must  be  as  horrible 
to  read  as  they  were  to  write.  But  they  are  less  than  the 
actual  truth,  for  no  pen  will  ever  in  one  book,  or  in  hun- 
dreds, give  the  full  record  of  the  individual  agony,  the 
broken  heart-springs,  the  soul-shock  as  well  as  the  shell- 
shock,  of  that  frightful  struggle  in  which,  on  one  side  and 
the  other,  two  million  men  were  engulfed.  Modern  civ- 
ilization was  wrecked  on  those  fire-blasted  fields,  though 
they  led  to  what  we  called  "Victory."  More  died  there 
than  the  flower  of  our  youth  and  German  manhood.  The 
Old  Order  of  the  world  died  there,  because  many  men 
who  came  alive  out  of  that  conflict  were  changed,  and 
vowed  not  to  tolerate  a  system  of  thought  which  had  led 
up  to  such  a  monstrous  massacre  of  human  beings  who 
prayed  to  the  same  God,  loved  the  same  joys  of  life,  and 
had  no  hatred  of  one  another  except  as  it  had  been  lighted 
and  inflamed  by  their  governors,  their  philosophers,  and 
their  newspapers.  The  German  soldier  cursed  the  mili- 
tarism which  had  plunged  him  into  that  horror.  The 
British  soldier  cursed  the  German  as  the  direct  cause  of 
all  his  trouble,  but  looked  back  on  his  side  of  the  lines 
and  saw  an  evil  there  which  was  also  his  enemy — the  evil 
of  a  secret  diplomacy  which  juggled  with  the  lives  of 
humble  men  so  that  war  might  be  sprung  upon  them 
without  their  knowledge  or  consent,  and  the  evil  of  rulers 
who  hated  German  militarism  not  because  of  its  wicked- 
ness, but  because  of  its  strength  in  rivalry  and  the  evil  of 
a  folly  in  the  minds  of  men  which  had  taught  them  to 


PSYCHOLOGY  ON  THE  SOMME  445 

regard  war  as  a  glorious  adventure,  and  patriotism  as  the 
right  to  dominate  other  peoples,  and  Hberty  as  a  catch- 
word of  politicians  in  search  of  power.  After  the  Somme 
battles  there  were  many  other  battles  as  bloody  and 
terrible,  but  they  only  confirmed  greater  numbers  of  men 
in  the  faith  that  the  old  world  had  been  wrong  in  its 
**  make-up"  and  wrong  in  its  religion  of  life.  Lip  service 
to  Christian  ethics  was  not  good  enough  as  an  argument 
for  this.  Either_the  heart_of  the  world  must  be  chajiged 
by  a  real  obedience  to  the  gospel  of  Christ  or  Christianity 
must  be  abandon^d-iSr  a  new  creed  which  ^rouldTgive 
better  results_between  men  and  nations.  There  couldj^e 
no^reconciling  of  bayonet-drill  and  high  expTosiyes  with 
the  words  *'Love  one  another."  Or  if  bayonet-drill  and 
high-explosive  force  were  to  be  the  rule  of  life  in  prepara- 
tion for  another  struggle  such  as  this,  then  at  least  let 
men_put^ hypocrisy  away  and  return  to  the  primitive  law 
of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  a  jungle  world  subservient 
to  the  king  of  beasis.  I'he  devotion  of  mihtary  chap- 
lains  to  the  wounded,  their  valor,  their  decorations  for 
gallantry  under  fire,  their  human  comradeship  and  spirit- 
ual sincerity,  would  not  bridge  the  gulf  in  the  minds  of 
many  soldiers  between  a  gospel  of  love  and  this  argument 
by  bayonet  and  bomb,  gas-shell  and  high  velocity,  blun- 
derbuss, club,  and  trench-shovel.  Some  time  or  other, 
when  German  militarism  acknowledged  defeat  by  the 
break  of  its  machine  or  by  the  revolt  of  its  people — not> 
until  then — there  must  be  a  new  order  of  things,  which 
would  prevent  such  another  massacre  in  the  fair  fields  oj 
life,  and  that  could  come  only  by  a  faith  in  the  hearts  of 
many  peoples  breaking  down  old  barriers  of  hatred  and 
reaching  out  to  one  another  in  a  fellowship  of  common 
sense  based  on  common  interests,  and  inspired  by  an 
ideal  higher  than  this  beastUke  rivalry  of  nations.  So 
thinking  men  thought  and  talked.  So  said  the  soldier- 
poets  who  wrote  from  the  trenches.  So  said  many  on- 
lookers. The  simple  soldier  did  not  talk  like  that  unless 
he  were  a  Frenchman,     Our  men  only  began  to  talk  like 


446  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

that  after  the  war — as  many  of  them  are  now  talking — 
and  the  revolt  of  the  spirit,  vague  but  passionate,  against 
the  evil  that  had  produced  this  devil's  trap  of  war,  and 
the  German  challenge,  was  subconscious  as  they  sat  in 
their  dugouts  and  crowded  in  their  ditches  in  the  battles 
of  the  Somme. 


Part  Seven 

THE   FIELDS   OF 
ARMAGEDDON 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON 


DURING  the  two  years  that  followed  the  battles  of 
the  Somme  I  recorded  in  my  daily  despatches,  re- 
pubHshed  in  book  form  {The  Struggle  in  Flanders  and  The 
Way  to  Victory),  the  narrative  of  that  continuous  conflict 
in  which  the  British  forces  on  the  western  front  were  at 
death-grips  with  the  German  monster  where  now  one  side 
and  then  the  other  heaved  themselves  upon  their  adver- 
sary and  struggled  for  the  knock-out  blow,  until  at  last, 
after  staggering  losses  on  both  sides,  the  enemy  was 
broken  to  bits  in  the  last  combined  attack  by  British, 
Belgian,  French,  and  American  armies.  There  is  no  need 
for  me  to  retell  all  that  history  in  detail,  and  I  am  glad 
to  know  that  there  is  nothing  I  need  alter  in  the  record  of 
events  which  I  wrote  as  they  happened,  because  they 
have  not  been  falsified  by  any  new  evidence;  and  those 
detailed  descriptions  of  mine  stand  true  in  fact  and  in  the 
emotion  of  the  hours  that  passed,  while  masses  of  men 
were  slaughtered  in  the  tields  of  Armageddon. 

But  now,  looking  back  upon  those  last  two  years  of  the 
war  as  an  eye-witness  of  many  tragic  and  heroic  things, 
I  see  the  frightful  drama  of  them  as  a  whole  and  as  one 
act  was  related  to  another,  and  as  the  plot  which  seemed 
so  tangled  and  confused,  led  by  inevitable  stages,  not 
under  the  control  of  any  field-marshal  or  chief  of  stafi^, 
to  the  climax  in  which  empires  crashed  and  exhausted 
nations  looked  round  upon  the  ruin  which  followed  defeat 
and  victory.  I  see  also,  as  in  one  picture,  the  colossal 
scale  of  that  human  struggle  in  rhnr  Aimg^eddnn  ofoiir 
civilization,  which  at  the  time  one  reckoned  only  by  each 


450  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

day's  success  or  failure,  each  day's  slaughter  on  that  side 
or  the  other.  One  may  add  up  the  whole  sum  according 
to  the  bookkeeping  of  Fate,  by  double-entry,  credit  and 
debit,  profit  and  loss.  One  may  set  our  attacks  in  the 
battles  of  Flanders  against  the  strength  of  the  German 
defense,  and  say  our  losses  of  three  to  one  (as  LudendorfF 
reckons  them,  and  as  many  of  us  guessed)  were  in  our 
favor,  because  we  could  afford  the  difi'erence  of  exchange 
and  the  enemy  could  not  put  so  many  human  counters 
into  the  pool  for  the  final  "kitty"  in  this  gamble  with 
Hfe  and  death.  One  may  balance  the  German  oflPensive 
in  March  of  'i8  with  the  weight  that  was  piling  up  against 
them  by  the  entry  of  the  Americans.  One  may  also  see 
now,  very  clearly,  the  paramount  importance  of  the 
human  factor  in  this  arithmetic  of  war,  the  morale  of 
men  being  of  greater  influence  than  generalship,  though 
dependent  on  it,  the  spirit  of  peoples  being  as  vital  to 
success  as  the  mechanical  efficiency  of  the  war-machine; 
and  above  all,  one  is  now  able  to  observe  how  each  side 
blundered  on  in  a  blind,  desperate  way,  sacrificing  masses 
of  human  life  without  a  clear  vision  of  the  consequences, 
until  at  last  one  side  blundered  more  than  another  and 
was  lost.  It  will  be  impossible  to  pretend  in  history  that 
our  High  Command,  or  any  other,  foresaw  the  thread  of 
plot  as  it  was  unraveled  to  the  end,  and  so  arranged  its 
plan  that  events  happened  according  to  design.  The 
events  of  March,  191 8,  were  not  foreseen  nor  prevented 
by  French  or  British.  The  ability  of  our  generals  was 
not  imaginative  nor  inventive,  but  limited  to  the  piling 
up  of  men  and  munitions,  always  more  men  and  more 
munitions,  against  positions  of  enormous  strength  and 
overcoming  obstacles  by  sheer  weight  of  flesh  and  blood 
and  high  explosives.  They  were  not  cunning  so  far  as 
I  could  see,  nor  in  the  judgment  of  the  men  under  their 
command,  but  simple  and  straightforward  gentlemen 
who  said  "once  more  unto  the  breach,"  and  sent  up  new 
battering-rams  by  brigades  and  divisions.  There  was 
no  evidence  that  I   could   find  of  liigh  directing  brains 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  451 

choosing  the  weakest  spot  in  the  enemy's  armor  and 
piercing  it  with  a  sharp  sword,  or  avoiding  a  direct  assault 
against  the  enemy's  most  formidable  positions  and  leap- 
ing upon  him  from  some  unguarded  way.  Perhaps  that 
was  impossible  in  the  conditions  of  modern  warfare  and 
the  limitations  of  the  British  front  until  the  arrival  of 
the  tanks,  which,  for  a  long  time,  were  wasted  in  the  im- 
passable bogs  of  Flanders,  where  their  steel  skeletons  still 
lie  rusting  as  a  proof  of  heroic  efforts  vainl}^  used.  Pos- 
sible or  not,  and  rare  genius  alone  could  prove  it  one  way 
or  another,  it  appeared  to  the  onlooker,  as  well  as  to  the 
soldier  who  carried  out  commands  that  our  method  of 
warfare  was  to  search  the  map  for  a  place  which  was 
strongest  in  the  enemy's  hues,  most  difficult  to  attack, 
most  powerfully  defended,  and  then  after  due  advertise- 
ment, not  to  take  an  unfair  advantage  of  the  enemy,  to 
launch  the  assault.  That  had  always  been  the  EngUsh 
way  and  that  was  our  way  in  many  battles  of  the  great 
war,  which  were  won  (unless  they  were  lost)  by  the  sheer 
valor  of  men  who  at  great  cost  smashed  their  way  through 
all  obstructions. 

The  Germans,  on  the  whole,  showed  more  original 
genius  in  military  science,  varying  their  methods  of 
attack  and  defense  according  to  circumstances,  building 
trenches  and  dugouts  which  we  never  equaled;  inventing 
the  concrete  blockhouse  or  "pill-box"  for  a  forward  de- 
fensive zone  thinly  held  in  advance  of  the  main  battle 
zone,  in  order  to  lessen  their  slaughter  under  the  weight 
of  our  gun-fire  (it  cost  us  dearly  for  a  time);  scattering 
their  men  in  organized  shell-craters  in  order  to  distract 
our  barrage  fire;  using  the  ''elastic  system  of  defense" 
with  frightful  success  against  Nivelle's  attack  in  the 
Champagne;  creating  the  system  of  assault  of  "infiltra- 
tion" which  broke  the  Italian  lines  at  Caporetto  in  1917 
and  ours  and  the  French  in  1918.  Against  all  that  we 
may  set  only  our  tanks,  which  in  the  end  led  the  way  to 
victory,  but  the  German  High  Command  blundered  atro- 
ciously in  all  the  larger  calculations  of  war,  so  that  they 


452  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

brought  about  the  doom  of  their  empire  by  a  series  of 
acts  which  would  seem  dehberate  if  we  had  not  known 
that  they  were  merely  blind.  With  a  folly  that  still 
seems  incredible,  they  took  the  risk  of  adding  the  greatest 
power  in  the  world — in  numbers  of  men  and  in  potential 
energy — to  their  list  of  enemies  at  a  time  when  their  own 
man-power  was  on  the  wane.  With  dehberate  arrogance 
they  flouted  the  United  States  and  forced  her  to  declare 
war.  Their  temptation,  of  course,  was  great.  The  Brit- 
ish naval  blockade  was  causing  severe  suffering  by  food 
shortage  to  the  German  people  and  denying  them  access 
to  raw  material  which  they  needed  for  the  machinery  of 
war. 

The  submarine  campaign,  ruthlessly  carried  out,  would 
and  did  inflict  immense  damage  upon  British  and  Allied 
shipping,  and  was  a  deadly  menace  to  England.  But 
German  calculations  were  utterly  wrong,  as  Ludendorff 
in  his  Memoirs  now  admits,  in  estimating  the  amount  of 
time  needed  to  break  her  bonds  by  submarine  warfare 
before  America  could  send  over  great  armies  to  Europe. 
The  German  war  lords  were  wrong  again  in  underesti- 
mating the  defensive  and  offensive  success  of  the  British 
navy  and  mercantile  marine  against  submarine  activi- 
ties. By  those  miscalculations  they  lost  the  war  in  the 
long  run,  and  by  other  errors  they  made  their  loss  more 
certain. 

One  mistake  they  made  was  their  utter  callousness  re- 
garding the  psychology  and  temper  of  their  soldiers  and 
civilian  population.  They  put  a  greater  strain  upon 
them  than  human  nature  could  bear,  and  by  driving  their 
fighting-men  into  one  shambles  after  another,  while  they 
doped  their  people  with  false  promises  which  were  never 
fulfilled,  they  sowed  the  seeds  of  revolt  and  despair  which 
finally  launched  them  into  gulfs  of  ruin.  I  have  read 
nothing  more  horrible  than  the  cold-blooded  cruelty  of 
Ludendorff's  Memoirs,  in  which,  without  any  attempt  at 
self-excuse,  he  reveals  himself  as  using  the  lives  of  millions 
of  men  upon  a  gambling  chance  of  victory  with  the  haz- 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  453 

ards  weighted  against  him,  as  he  admits.  Writing  of 
January,  1917,  he  says:  '*A  collapse  on  the  part  of  Russia 
was  by  no  means  to  be  contemplated  and  was,  indeed, 
not  reckoned  upon  by  any  one.  .  .  .  Failing  the  U-boat 
campaign  we  reckoned  with  the  collapse  of  the  Quadruple 
Alliance  during  1917."  Yet  with  that  enormous  risk 
visible  ahead,  Ludendorff  continued  to  play  the  grand  jeiiy 
the  great  game,  and  did  not  advise  any  surrender  of 
imperial  ambitions  in  order  to  obtain  a  peace  for  his 
people,  and  was  furious  with  the  Majority  party  in  the 
Reichstag  for  preparing  a  peace  resolution.  The  collapse 
of  Russia  inspired  him  with  new  hopes  of  victory  in  the 
west,  and  again  he  prepared  to  sacrifice  masses  of  men 
in  the  slaughter-fields.  But  he  blundered  again,  and  this 
time  fatally.  His  time-table  was  out  of  gear.  The  U- 
boat  war  had  failed.  American  manhood  was  pouring 
into  France,  and  German  soldiers  on  the  Russian  front 
had  been  infected  with  ideas  most  dangerous  to  Ger- 
man discipline  and  the  "will  to  win."  At  the  end,  as  at 
the  beginning,  the  German  war  lords  failed  to  understand 
the  psychology  of  human  nature  as  they  had  failed  to 
understand  the  spirit  of  France,  of  Belgium,  of  Great 
Britain,  and  of  America.  One  of  the  most  important 
admissions  in  history  is  made  by  Ludendorff  when  he 
writes : 

"Looking  back,  I  say  our  decline  began  clearly  with  the 
outbreak  of  the  revolution  in  Russia.  On  the  one  side 
the  government  was  dominated  by  the  fear  that  the 
infection  would  spread,  and  on  the  other  by  the  feeling 
of  their  helplessness  to  instil  fresh  strength  into  the  masses 
of  the  people  and  to  strengthen  their  warlike  ardor,  waning 
as  it  was  through  a  combination  of  innumerable  cir- 
cumstances." 

So  the  web  of  fate  was  spun,  and  men  who  thought 

they  were  directing  the  destiny  of  the  world  were  merely 

caught  in  those  woven  threads  Hke  puppets  tied  to  strings 

and  made  to  dance.     It  was  the  old   Dance  of  Death, 

which  has  happened  before  in  the  folly  of  mankind. 
30 


454  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

n 

During  the  German  retreat  to  their  Hindenburg  Hne 
we  saw  the  full  ruthlessness  of  war  as  never  before  on  the 
western  front,  in  the  laying  waste  of  a  beautiful  country- 
side, not  by  rational  fighting,  but  by  carefully  organized 
destruction.  LudendorfF  claims,  quite  justly,  that  it  was 
in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  war.  That  is  true.  It  is 
only  that  our  laws  of  war  are  not  justified  by  any  code  of 
humanity  above  that  of  primitive  savages.  *'The  de- 
cision to  retreat,"  he  says,  *'was  not  reached  without  a 
painful  struggle.  It  implied  a  confession  of  weakness 
that  was  bound  to  raise  the  morale  of  the  enemy  and  to 
lower  our  own.  But  as  it  was  necessary  for  military 
reasons  we  had  no  choice.  It  had  to  be  carried  out.  .  .  . 
The  whole  movement  was  a  brilliant  performance.  .  .  . 
The  retirement  proved  in  a  high  degree  remunerative." 

I  saw  the  brilliant  performance  in  its  operation.  I 
went  into  beautiful  little  towns  like  Peronne,  where  the 
houses  were  being  gutted  by  smoldering  fire,  and  into 
hundreds  of  villages  where  the  enemy  had  just  gone  out 
of  them  after  touching  off  explosive  charges  which  had 
made  all  their  cottages  collapse  like  card  houses,  their 
roofs  spread  flat  upon  their  ruins,  and  their  churches, 
after  centuries  of  worship  in  them,  fall  into  chaotic  heaps 
of  masonry.  I  wandered  through  the  ruins  of  old  French 
chateaux,  once  very  stately  in  their  terraced  gardens,  now 
a  litter  of  brickwork,  broken  statuary,  and  twisted  iron- 
work above  open  vaults  where  not  even  the  dead  had 
been  left  to  lie  in  peace.  I  saw  the  little  old  fruit-trees  of 
French  peasants  sawn  off  at  the  base,  and  the  tall  trees 
along  the  roadsides  stretched  out  like  dead  giants  to  bar 
our  passage.  Enormous  craters  had  been  blown  in  the 
roadways,  which  had  to  be  bridged  for  our  traffic  of  men 
and  guns,  following  hard  upon  the  enemy's  retreat. 

There  was  a  queer  sense  of  illusion  as  one  traveled 
through  this  desolation.  At  a  short  distance  many  of  the 
villages  seemed  to  stand  as  before  the  war.     One  expected 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  455 

to  find  inhabitants  there.  But  upon  close  approach  one 
saw  that  each  house  was  but  an  empty  shell  blown  out 
from  cellar  to  roof,  and  one  wandered  through  the  streets 
of  the  ruins  in  a  silence  that  was  broken  only  by  the  sound 
of  one's  own  voice  or  by  a  few  shells  crashing  into  the 
gutted  houses.  The  enemy  was  in  the  next  village,  or 
the  next  but  one,  with  a  few  field-guns  and  a  rear-guard  of 
machine-gunners. 

In  most  villages,  in  many  of  his  dugouts,  and  by  con- 
traptions with  objects  lying  amid  the  htter,  he  had  left 
** booby  traps"  to  blow  our  men  to  bits  if  they  knocked 
a  wire,  or  stirred  an  old  boot,  or  picked  up  a  fountain-pen, 
or  walked  too  often  over  a  board  where  beneath  acid  was 
eating  through  a  metal  plate  to  a  high-explosive  charge. 
I  little  knew  when  I  walked  round  the  tower  of  the  town 
hall  of  Bapaume  that  in  another  week,  with  the  enemy 
far  away,  it  would  go  up  in  dust  and  ashes.  Only  a  few 
of  our  men  were  killed  or  blinded  by  these  monkey-tricks. 
Our  engineers  found  most  of  them  before  they  were 
touched  off,  but  one  went  down  dugouts  or  into  ruined 
houses  with  a  sense  of  imminent  danger.  All  through 
the  devastated  region  one  walked  with  an  uncanny  feeling 
of  an  evil  spirit  left  behind  by  masses  of  men  whose 
bodies  had  gone  away.  It  exuded  from  scraps  of  old 
clothing,  it  was  in  the  stench  of  the  dugouts  and  in  the 
ruins  they  had  made. 

In  some  few  villages  there  were  living  people  left  be- 
hind, some  hundreds  in  Nesle  and  Roye,  and,  all  told, 
some  thousands.  They  had  been  driven  in  from  the 
other  villages  burning  around  them,  their  own  villages, 
whose  devastation  they  wept  to  see.  I  met  these  people 
who  had  lived  under  German  rule  and  talked  with  many 
of  them — old  women,  wrinkled  like  dried-up  apples,  young 
women  waxen  of  skin,  hollow-eyed,  with  sharp  cheek- 
bones, old  peasant  farmers  and  the  gamekeepers  of 
French  chateaux,  and  young  boys  and  girls  pinched  by 
years  of  hunger  that  was  not  quite  starvation.  It  was 
from  these  people  that  I  learned  a  good  deal  about  the 


456  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

psychology  of  German  soldiers  during  the  battles  of  the 
Somme.  They  told  me  of  the  terror  of  these  men  at  the 
increasing  fury  of  our  gun-fire,  of  their  desertion  and  re- 
volt to  escape  the  slaughter,  and  of  their  rage  against  the 
"Great  People"  who  used  them  for  gun-fodder.  Habit- 
ually many  of  them  talked  of  the  war  as  the  "Great 
Swindle."  These  French  civilians  hated  the  Germans  in 
the  mass  with  a  cold,  deadly  hatred.  They  spoke  with 
shrill  passion  at  the  thought  of  German  discipline,  fines, 
punishments,  requisitions,  which  they  had  suffered  in 
these  years.  The  hope  of  vengeance  was  like  water  to 
parched  throats.  Yet  I  noticed  that  nearly  every  one  of 
these  people  had  something  good  to  say  about  some 
German  soldier  who  had  been  billeted  with  them.  "He 
was  a  good-natured  fellow.  He  chopped  wood  for  me 
and  gave  the  children  his  own  bread.  He  wept  when  he 
told  me  that  the  village  was  to  be  destroyed."  Even 
some  of  the  German  officers  had  deplored  this  destruction. 
"The  world  will  have  a  right  to  call  us  barbarians,"  said 
one  of  them  in  Ham,  "But  what  can  we  do?  We  are 
under  orders.  If  we  do  not  obey  we  shall  be  shot.  It  is 
the  cruelty  of  the  High  Command.  It  is  the  cruelty  of 
war." 

On  the  whole  it  seemed  they  had  not  misused  the 
women.  I  heard  no  tales  of  actual  atrocity,  though  some 
of  brutal  passion.  But  many  women  shrugged  their 
shoulders  when  I  questioned  them  about  this  and  said: 
"They  had  no  need  to  use  violence  in  their  way  of  love- 
making.     There  were  many  volunteers." 

They  rubbed  their  thumbs  and  fingers  together  as 
though  touching  money  and  said,  "You  understand?" 

I  understood  when  I  went  to  a  convent  in  Amiens  and 
saw  a  crowd  of  young  mothers  with  flaxen-haired  babies, 
just  arrived  from  the  liberated  districts.  "All  those  are 
the  children  of  German  fathers,"  said  the  old  Reverend 
Mother.  "That  is  the  worst  tragedy  of  war.  How  will 
God  punish  all  this?  Alas!  it  is  the  innocent  who  suffer 
for  the  guilty." 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  457 

Eighteen  months  later,  or  thereabouts,  I  went  into  a 
house  in  Cologne,  where  a  British  outpost  was  on  the 
Hohenzollern  bridge.  There  was  a  babies'  creche  in  an 
upper  room,  and  a  German  lady  was  tending  thirty  little 
ones  whose  chorus  of  ''Guten  Tag!  GtUen  Tag!"  was  like 
the  quacking  of  ducks. 

**  After  to-morrow  there  will  be  no  more  milk  for  them,'* 
she  said. 

"And  then.?"  I  asked. 

"And  then  many  of  them  will  die." 

She  wept  a  httle.  I  thought  of  those  other  babies  in 
Amiens,  and  of  the  old  Reverend  Mother. 

"  How  will  God  punish  all  this  ?  Alas !  it  is  the  innocent 
who  suffer  for  the  guilty." 

Of  those  things  General  Ludendorff  does  not  write  in 
his  AlemoirSy  which  deal  with  the  strategy  and  machinery 
of  war. 

Ill 

Sir  Douglas  Haig  was  not  misled  into  the  error  of  fol- 
lowing up  the  German  retreat,  across  that  devastated 
country,  with  masses  of  men.  He  sent  forward  outposts 
to  keep  in  touch  with  the  German  rear-guards  and  pre- 
pared to  deliver  big  blows  at  the  Vimy  Ridge  and  the  lines 
round  Arras.  This  new  battle  by  British  troops  was  dic- 
tated by  French  strategy  rather  than  by  ours.  General 
Nivelle,  the  new  generalissimo^  was  organizing  a  great 
offensive  in  the  Champagne  and  desired  the  British  army 
to  strike  first  and  keep  on  striking  in  order  to  engage  and 
exhaust  German  divisions  until  he  was  ready  to  launch 
his  own  legions.  The  "secret"  of  his  preparations  was 
known  by  every  officer  in  the  French  army  and  by  Hin- 
denburg  and  his  staff,  who  prepared  a  new  method  of 
defense  to  meet  it.  The  French  officers  with  whom  I 
talked  were  supremely  confident  of  success.  "We  shall 
go  through,"  they  said.  "It  is  certain.  Anybody  who 
thinks  otherwise  is  a  traitor  who  betrays  his  country  by 
the  poison  of  pessimism.     Nivelle  will  deal  the  death- 


4S8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

blow.'*  So  spoke  an  officer  of  the  Chasseurs  Alplns,  and 
a  friend  in  the  infantry  of  the  hne,  over  a  cup  of  coffee  in 
an  estaminet  crammed  with  other  French  soldiers  who 
were  on  their  way  to  the  Champagne  front. 

Nivelle  did  not  launch  his  offensive  until  April  i6th, 
seven  days  after  the  British  had  captured  the  heights  of 
Vimy  and  gone  far  to  the  east  of  Arras.  Hindenburg  was 
ready.  He  adopted  his  ''elastic  system  of  defense," 
which  consisted  in  withdrawing  the  main  body  of  his 
troops  beyond  the  range  of  the  French  barrage  fire,  leav- 
ing only  a  few  outposts  to  camouflage  the  withdrawal 
and  be  sacrificed  for  the  sake  of  the  others  (those  German 
outposts  must  have  disliked  their  martyrdom  under 
orders,  and  I  doubt  whether  they,  poor  devils,  were  ex- 
hilarated by  the  thought  of  their  heroic  service).  He  also 
withdrew  the  full  power  of  his  artillery  beyond  the  range 
of  French  counter-battery  work  and  to  such  a  distance 
that  when  it  was  the  German  turn  to  fire  the  French 
infantry  would  be  beyond  the  effective  protection  of  their 
own  guns.  They  were  to  be  allowed  an  easy  walk 
through  to  their  death-trap.  That  is  what  happened. 
The  French  infantry,  advancing  with  masses  of  black 
troops  in  the  Colonial  Corps  in  the  front-line  of  assault, 
all  exultant  and  inspired  by  a  belief  in  victory,  swept 
through  the  forward  zone  of  the  German  defenses,  aston- 
ished, and  then  disconcerted  by  the  scarcity  of  Germans, 
until  an  annihilating  barrage  fire  dropped  upon  them  and 
smashed  their  human  waves.  From  French  officers  and 
nurses  I  heard  appalling  tales  of  this  tragedy.  The  death- 
wail  of  the  black  troops  froze  the  blood  of  Frenchmen  with 
horror.  Their  own  losses  were  immense  in  a  bloody 
shambles.  I  was  told  by  French  officers  that  their  losses 
on  the  first  day  of  battle  were  1 50,000  casualties,  and  these 
figures  were  generally  believed.  They  were  not  so  bad 
as  that,  though  terrible.  Semi-official  figures  state  that 
the  operations  which  lasted  from  April  i6th  to  April  25th 
cost  France  28,000  killed  on  the  field  of  battle,  5,000  who 
died  of  wounds  in  hospital,  4,000  prisoners,  and  80,000 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  459 

wounded.  General  Nivelle's  offensive  was  called  off,  and 
French  officers  who  had  said,  "We  shall  break  through. 
...  It  is  certain,"  now  said:  "We  came  up  against  a  bee 
de  gaz.  As  you  English  would  say,  we  'got  it  in  the  neck.' 
It  is  a  great  misfortune." 

The  battle  of  Arras,  in  which  the  British  army  was  en- 
gaged, began  on  April  9th,  an  Easter  Sunday,  when  there 
was  a  gale  of  sleet  and  snow.  From  ground  near  the  old 
city  of  Arras  I  saw  the  preliminary  bombardment  when  the 
Vimy  Ridge  was  blasted  by  a  hurricane  of  fire  and  the 
German  lines  beyond  Arras  were  tossed  up  in  earth  and 
flame.  From  one  of  old  Vauban's  earthworks  outside  the 
walls  I  saw  lines  of  our  men  going  up  in  assault  beyond 
the  suburbs  of  Blangy  and  St.-Laurent  to  Roclincourt, 
through  a  veil  of  sleet  and  smoke.  Our  gun-fire  was 
immense  and  devastating,  and  the  first  blow  that  fell 
upon  the  enemy  was  overpowering.  The  Vimy  Ridge  was 
captured  from  end  to  end  by  the  Canadians  on  the  left 
and  the  51st  Division  of  Highlanders  on  the  right.  By 
the  afternoon  the  entire  living  German  population,  more 
than  seven  thousand  in  the  tunnels  of  Vimy,  were  down 
below  in  the  valley  on  our  side  of  the  lines,  and  on  the 
ridge  were  many  of  their  dead  as  I  saw  them  afterward 
horribly  mangled  by  shell-fire  in  the  upheaved  earth. 
The  Highland  Division,  commanded  by  General  Harper 
— "Uncle  Harper,"  he  was  called — had  done  as  well  as 
the  Canadians,  though  they  had  less  honor,  and  took  as 
many  prisoners.  H.  D.  was  their  divisional  sign  as  I  saw 
it  stenciled  on  many  ruined  walls  throughout  the  war. 
"Well,  General,"  said  a  Scottish  sergeant,  "they  don't 
call  us  Harper's  Duds  any  morel"  .  .  .  On  the  right  Eng- 
lish county  troops  of  the  12th  Division,  3d  Division,  and 
others,  the  15th  (Scottish)  and  the  36th  (London)  had 
broken  through,  deeply  and  widely,  capturing  many  men 
and  guns  after  hard  fighting  round  machine-gun  redoubts. 
That  night  masses  of  German  prisoners  suffered  terribly 
from  a  blizzard  in  the  barbed-wire  cages  at  Etrun,  by 
Arras,  where  JuHus  Caesar  had  his  camp  for  a  year  in 


.460  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

other  days  of  history.  They  herded  together  with  their 
bodies  bent  to  the  storm,  each  man  sheltering  his  fellow 
and  giving  a  little  human  warmth.  All  night  through 
a  German  commandant  sat  in  our  Intelligence  hut  with 
his  head  bowed  on  his  breast.  Every  now  and  then  he 
said:  "It  is  cold!  It  is  cold!"  And  our  men  lay  out  in 
the  captured  ground  beyond  Arras  and  on  the  Vimy 
Ridge,  under  harassing  fire  and  machine-gun  fire,  cold,  too, 
in  that  wild  blizzard,  with  British  dead  and  German  dead 
in  the  mangled  earth  about  them. 

LudendorfF  admits  the  severity  of  that  defeat. 

"The  battle  near  Arras  on  April  9th  formed  a  bad 
beginning  to  the  capital  fighting  during  this  year. 

"April  loth  and  the  succeeding  days  were  critical  days. 
A  breach  twelve  thousand  to  fifteen  thousand  yards  wide 
and  as  much  as  six  thousand  yards  and  more  in  depth  is 
not  a  thing  to  be  mended  without  more  ado.  It  takes  a 
good  deal  to  repair  the  inordinate  wastage  of  men  and 
guns  as  well  as  munitions  that  results  from  such  a  breach. 
It  was  the  business  of  the  Supreme  Command  to  provide 
reserves  on  a  large  scale.  But  in  view  of  the  troops  avail- 
able, and  of  the  war  situation,  it  was  simply  not  possible 
to  hold  a  second  division  in  readiness  behind  each  divi- 
sion that  might,  perhaps,  be  about  to  drop  out.  A  day 
like  April  9th  upset  all  calculations.  It  was  a  matter  of 
days  before  a  new  front  could  be  formed  and  consoHdated. 
Even  after  the  troops  were  ultimately  in  line  the  issue  of 
the  crisis  depended,  as  always  in  such  cases,  very  mate- 
rially upon  whether  the  enemy  followed  up  his  initial 
success  with  a  fresh  attack  and  by  fresh  successes  made  it 
difficult  for  us  to  create  a  firm  front.  In  view  of  the 
weakening  of  the  fine  that  inevitably  resulted,  such  suc- 
cesses were  only  too  easy  to  achieve. 

"From  April  loth  onward  the  English  attacked  in  the 
breach  in  great  strength,  but  after  all  not  in  the  grand 
manner;  they  extended  their  attack  on  both  wings,  espe- 
cially to  the  southward  as  far  as  Bullccourt.  On  April 
jith  they  gained   Monchy,  while  we  during  the  night 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  461 

before  the  12th  evacuated  the  Vimy  heights.  April  23d 
and  28th,  and  also  May  3d,  were  again  days  of  heavy, 
pitched  battle.  In  between  there  was  some  bitter  local 
fighting.  The  struggle  continued,  we  delivered  minor 
successful  counter-attacks,  and  on  the  other  hand  lost 
ground  slightly  at  various  points." 

I  remember  many  pictures  of  that  fighting  round  Arras 
in  the  days  that  followed  the  first  day.  I  remember  the 
sinister  beauty  of  the  city  itself,  when  there  was  a  surging 
traffic  of  men  and  guns  through  its  ruined  streets  in  spite 
of  long-range  shells  which  came  crashing  into  the  houses. 
Our  soldiers,  in  their  steel  hats  and  goatskin  coats,  looked 
like  medieval  men-at-arms.  The  Highlanders  who  crowd- 
ed Arras  had  their  pipe-bands  there  and  they  played 
in  the  Petite  Place,  and  the  skirl  of  the  pipes  shattered 
against  the  gables  of  old  houses.  There  were  tunnels 
beneath  Arras  through  which  our  men  advanced  to  the 
German  lines,  and  I  went  along  them  when  one  line  of 
men  was  going  into  battle  and  another  was  coming  back, 
wounded,  some  of  them  bund,  bloody,  vomiting  with  the 
fumes  of  gas  in  their  lungs — their  steel  hats  cHnking  as 
they  groped  past  one  another.  In  vaults  each  side  of  these 
passages  men  played  cards  on  barrels,  to  the  light  of 
candles  stuck  in  bottles,  or  slept  until  their  turn  to  fight, 
with  gas-masks  for  their  pillows.  Outside  the  Citadel  of 
Arras,  built  by  Vauban  under  Louis  XIV,  there  were  long 
queues  of  wounded  men  taking  their  turn  to  the  surgeons 
who  were  working  in  a  deep  crypt  with  a  high-vaulted 
roof.  One  day  there  were  three  thousand  of  them,  silent, 
patient,  muddy,  blood-stained.  Blind  boys  or  men  with 
smashed  faces  swathed  in  bloody  rags  groped  forward 
to  the  dark  passage  leading  to  the  vault,  led  by  comrades. 
On  the  grass  outside  lay  men  with  leg  wounds  and  stom- 
ach wounds.  The  way  past  the  station  to  the  Arras- 
Cambrai  road  was  a  death-trap  for  our  transport  and  I 
saw  the  bodies  of  horses  and  men  horribly  mangled  there. 
Dead  horses  were  thick  on  each  side  of  an  avenue  of  trees 
on  the  southern  side  of  the  city,  lying  in  their  blood  and 


462  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

bowels.  The  traffic  policeman  on  "point  duty"  on  the 
Arras-Cambrai  road  had  an  impassive  face  under  his  steel 
helmet,  as  though  in  Piccadilly  Circus;  only  turned  his 
head  a  little  at  the  scream  of  a  shell  which  plunged  through 
the  gable  of  a  corner  house  above  him.  There  was  a 
Pioneer  battalion  along  the  road  out  to  Observatory 
Ridge,  which  was  a  German  target.  They  were  mending 
the  road  beyond  the  last  trench,  through  which  our  men 
had  smashed  their  way.  They  were  busy  with  bricks 
and  shovels,  only  stopping  to  stare  at  shells  plowing  holes 
in  the  fields  on  each  side  of  them.  When  I  came  back  one 
morning  a  number  of  them  lay  covered  with  blankets,  as 
though  asleep.  They  were  dead,  but  their  comrades 
worked  on  grimly,  with  no  joy  of  labor  in  their  sweat. 

Monchy  Hill  was  the  key  position,  high  above  the  val- 
ley of  the  Scarpe.  I  saw  it  first  when  there  was  a  white 
village  there,  hardly  touched  by  fire,  and  afterward  when 
there  was  no  village.  I  was  in  the  village  below  Observa- 
tory Ridge  on  the  morning  of  April  nth  when  cavalry 
was  massed  on  that  ground,  waiting  for  orders  to  go  into 
action.  The  headquarters  of  the  cavalry  division  was  in 
a  ditch  covered  by  planks,  and  the  cavalry  generals  and 
their  staffs  sat  huddled  together  with  maps  over  their 
knees.  "  I  am  afraid  the  general  is  busy  for  the  moment," 
said  a  young  staff-officer  on  top  of  the  ditch.  He  looked 
about  the  fields  and  said,  ''It's  very  unhealthy  here."  I 
agreed  with  him.  The  bodies  of  many  young  soldiers  lay 
about.  Five-point-nines  (5.9's)  were  coming  over  in  a 
haphazard  way.  It  was  no  ground  for  cavalry.  But 
some  squadrons  of  the  loth  Hussars,  Essex  Yeomanry, 
and  the  Blues  were  ordered  to  take  Monchy,  and  rode 
up  the  hill  in  a  flurry  of  snow  and  were  seen  by  German 
gunners  and  slashed  by  shrapnel.  Most  of  their  horses 
were  killed  in  the  village  or  outside  it,  and  the  men  suf- 
fered many  casualties,  including  their  general — Bulkely 
Johnson — ^whose  body  I  saw  carried  back  on  a  stretcher 
to  the  ruin  of  Thilloy,  where  crumps  were  bursting.  It 
is   an   astonishing  thing  that  two  withered  old   French 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  463 

women  stayed  in  the  village  all  through  the  fighting. 
When  our  troops  rode  in  these  women  came  running  for- 
ward, frightened  and  crying  '^CamaradesI"  as  though  in 
fear  of  the  enemy.  When  our  men  surrounded  them  they 
were  full  of  joy  and  held  up  their  scraggy  old  faces  to  be 
kissed  by  these  troopers.  Afterward  Monchy  was  filled 
with  a  fury  of  shell-fire  and  the  troopers  crawled  out  from 
the  ruins,  leaving  the  village  on  the  hill  to  be  attacked 
and  captured  again  by  our  infantry  of  the  15th  and 
37th  Divisions,  who  were  also  badly  hammered. 

Heroic  folly !  The  cavalry  in  reserve  below  Observatory 
Hill  stood  to  their  horses,  staring  up  at  a  German  airplane 
which  came  overhead,  careless  of  our  "Ai.rchies."  The 
eye  of  the  German  pilot  must  have  widened  at  the  sight 
of  that  mass  of  men  and  horses.  He  carried  back  glad 
tidings  to  the  guns. 

One  of  the  cavalry  officers  spoke  to  me. 

"You  look  ill." 

"No,  I'm  all  right.     Only  cold." 

The  officer  himself  looked  worn  and  haggard  after  a 
night  in  the  open. 

*'Do  you  think  the  Germans  will  get  their  range  as  far 
as  this?  I'm  nervous  about  the  men  and  the  horses. 
We've  been  here  for  hours,  and  it  seems  no  good." 

I  did  not  remind  him  that  the  airplane  was  undoubtedly 
the  herald  of  long-range  shells.  They  came  within  a  few 
minutes.  Some  men  and  horses  were  killed.  I  was  with 
a  Highland  officer  and  we  took  cover  in  a  ditch  not  more 
than  breast  high.  Shells  were  bursting  damnably  close, 
scattering  us  with  dirt. 

"Let's  strike  away  from  the  road,"  said  Major  Schiach. 
"They  always  tape  it  out." 

We  struck  across  country,  back  to  Arras,  glad  to  get 
there  .  .  .  other  men  had  to  stay. 

The  battles  to  the  east  of  Arras  that  went  before  the 
capture  of  Monchy  and  followed  it  were  hard,  nagging 
actions  along  the  valley  of  the  Scarpe,  which  formed  a 
glacis,  where  our  men  were  terribly  exposed  to  machine- 


464  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

gun  fire,  and  suffered  heavily  day  after  day,  week  after 
week,  for  no  object  apparent  to  our  battalion  officers  and 
men,  who  did  not  know  that  they  were  doing  team-work 
for  the  French.  The  Londoners  of  the  56th  Division 
made  a  record  advance  through  Neuville-Vitasse  to  Henin 
and  Heninel,  and  broke  a  switch-line  of  the  Hindenburg 
system  across  the  little  Cojeul  River  by  Wancourt. 
There  was  a  fatal  attack  in  the  dark  on  May  3d,  when 
East  Kents  and  Surreys  and  Londoners  saw  a  gray  dawn 
come,  revealing  the  enemy  between  them  and  our  main 
line,  and  had  to  hack  their  Vv-ay  through  if  they  could. 
There  were  many  who  could  not,  and  even  divisional 
generals  were  embittered  by  these  needless  losses  and  by 
the  hard  driving  of  their  men,  saying  fierce  things  about 
our  High  Command. 

Their  language  was  mild  compared  with  that  of  some 
of  our  young  officers.  I  remember  one  I  met  near  Henin. 
He  was  one  of  a  group  of  three,  all  gunner  officers  who 
were  looking  about  for  better  gun  positions  not  so  clearly 
visible  to  the  enemy,  who  was  in  two  little  woods — the 
Bois  de  Sart  and  Bois  Vert — which  stared  down  upon 
them  like  green  eyes.  Some  of  their  guns  had  been  de- 
stroyed, many  of  their  horses  killed;  some  of  their  men. 
A  few  minutes  before  our  meeting  a  shell  had  crashed 
into  a  bath  close  to  their  hut,  where  men  were  washing 
themselves.  The  explosion  filled  the  bath  with  blood 
and  bits  of  flesh.  The  younger  officer  stared  at  me  under 
the  tilt  forward  of  his  steel  hat  and  said,  "Hullo,  Gibbs!" 
I  had  played  chess  with  him  at  Groom's  Cafe  in  Fleet 
Street  in  days  before  the  war.  I  went  back  to  his  hut 
and  had  tea  with  him,  close  to  that  bath,  hoping  that  we 
should  not  be  cut  up  with  the  cake.  There  were  noises 
*'off^,"  as  they  say  in  stage  directions,  which  were  enor- 
mously disconcerting  to  one's  peace  of  mind,  and  not 
very  far  off".  I  had  heard  before  some  hard  words  about 
our  generalship  and  staff-work,  but  never  anything  so 
passionate,  so  violent,  as  from  that  gunner  officer.  His 
view,  of  the  business  was  summed  up  in  the  word  "mur- 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  465 

der."  He  raged  against  the  impossible  orders  sent  down 
from  headquarters,  against  the  brutahty  with  which  men 
were  left  in  the  Hne  week  after  week,  and  against  the 
monstrous,  abominable  futility  of  all  our  so-called  strategy. 
His  nerves  were  in  rags,  as  I  could  see  by  the  way  in  which 
his  hand  shook  when  he  lighted  one  cigarette  after  an- 
other. His  spirit  was  in  a  flame  of  revolt  against  the 
misery  of  his  sleeplessness,  filth,  and  imminent  peril  of 
death.  Every  shell  that  burst  near  Henin  sent  a  shudder 
through  him.  I  stayed  an  hour  in  his  hut,  and  then  went 
away  toward  Neuville-Vitasse  with  harassing  fire  follow- 
ing along  the  way.  I  looked  back  many  times  to  the 
valley,  and  to  the  ridges  where  the  enemy  lived  above  it, 
invisible  but  deadly.  The  sun  was  setting  and  there  was 
a  tawny  glamour  in  the  sky,  and  a  mystical  beauty  over 
the  landscape  despite  the  desert  that  war  had  made 
there,  leaving  only  white  ruins  and  slaughtered  trees 
where  once  there  were  good  villages  with  church  spires 
rising  out  of  sheltering  woods.  The  German  gunners 
were  doing  their  evening  hate.  Crumps  were  bursting 
heavily  again  amid  our  gun  positions. 

Heninel  was  not  a  choice  spot.  There  were  other  places 
of  extreme  unhealthfulness  where  our  men  had  fought 
their  way  up  to  the  Hindenburg  line,  or,  as  the  Germans 
called  it,  the  Siegfried  line.  Croisille  and  Cherisy  were 
targets  of  German  guns,  and  I  saw  them  ravaging  among 
the  ruins,  and  dodged  them.  But  our  men,  who  lived 
close  to  these  places,  stayed  there  too  long  to  dodge  them 
always.  They  were  inhabitants,  not  visitors.  The  Aus- 
trahans  settled  down  in  front  of  Bullecourt,  captured  it 
after  many  desperate  fights,  which  left  them  with  a  bitter 
grudge  against  tanks  which  had  failed  them  and  some 
Enghsh  troops  who  v/ere  held  up  on  the  left  while  they 
went  forward  and  were  slaughtered.  The  4th  Australian 
Division  lost  three  thousand  men  in  an  experimental 
attack  directed  by  the  Fifth  Army.  They  made  their 
gun  emplacements  in  the  Noreuil  Valley,  the  valley  of 
death  as  they  called  it,  and  Australian  gunners  made 


466  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

little  slit  trenches  and  scuttled  into  them  when  the  Ger- 
mans ranged  on  their  batteries,  blowing  gun  spokes  and 
wheels  and  breech-blocks  into  the  air.  Queant,  the  bas- 
tion of  the  Hindenburg  line,  stared  straight  down  the 
valley,  and  it  was  evil  ground,  as  I  knew  when  I  went 
walking  there  with  another  war  correspondent  and  an 
Australian  officer  who  at  a  great  pace  led  us  round  about, 
amid  5.9's,  and  debouched  a  little  to  see  one  of  our  am- 
munition-dumps exploding  like  a  Brock's  Benefit,  and 
chattered  brightly  under  "woolly  bears"  which  made  a 
rending  tumult  above  our  heads.  I  think  he  enjoyed  his 
afternoon  out  from  staff-work  in  the  headquarters  huts. 
Afterward  I  was  told  that  he  was  mad,  but  I  think  he 
was  only  brave.  I  hated  those  hours,  but  put  on  the 
mask  that  royalty  wears  when  it  takes  an  intelligent  in- 
terest in  factory-work. 

The  streams  of  wounded  poured  down  into  the  casualty 
clearing  stations  day  by  day,  week  by  week,  and  I  saw 
the  crowded  Butchers'  Shops  of  war,  where  busy  surgeons 
lopped  at  limbs  and  plugged  men's  wounds. 

Yet  in  those  days,  as  before  and  afterward,  as  at  the 
beginning  and  as  at  the  end,  the  spirits  of  British  soldiers 
kept  high  unless  their  bodies  were  laid  low.  Between 
battles  they  enjoyed  their  spells  of  rest  behind  the  lines. 
In  that  early  summer  of  '17  there  was  laughter  in  Arras, 
lots  of  fun  in  spite  of  high  velocities,  the  music  of  massed 
pipers  and  brass  bands,  jolly  comradeship  in  billets  with 
paneled  walls  upon  which  perhaps  Robespierre's  shadow 
had  fallen  in  the  candle-light  before  the  Revolution,  when 
he  was  the  good  young  man  of  Arras. 

As  a  guest  of  the  Gordons,  of  the  15th  Division,  I  list- 
ened to  the  pipers  who  marched  round  the  table  and 
stood  behind  the  colonel's  chair  and  mine,  and  played  the 
martial  music  of  Scotland,  until  something  seemed  to 
break  in  my  soul  and  my  ear-drums.  I  introduced  a 
French  friend  to  the  mess,  and  as  a  guest  of  honor  he  sat 
next  to  the  colonel,  and  the  eight  pipers  played  behind  his 
chair.     He  went  pale,  deadly  white,  and  presently  swooned 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  467 

off  his  chair  .  .  .  and  the  Gordons  thought  it  the  finest 
tribute  to  their  pipes! 

The  officers  danced  reels  in  stocking  feet  with  challeng- 
ing cries,  Gaelic  exhortations,  with  fine  grace  and  passion, 
though  they  were  tangled  sometimes  in  the  maze  .  .  . 
many  of  them  fell  in  the  fields  outside  or  in  the  bogs  of 
Flanders. 

On  the  western  side  of  Arras  there  were  field  sports  by 
London  men,  and  Surreys,  Buff's,  Sussex,  Norfolks,  Suf- 
folks,  and  Devons.  They  played  cricket  between  their 
turns  in  the  line,  lived  in  the  sunshine  of  the  day,  and  did 
not  look  forward  to  the  morrow.  At  such  times  one 
found  no  trace  of  war's  agony  in  their  faces  or  their  eyes 
nor  in  the  quality  of  their  laughter. 

My  dwelhng-place  at  that  time,  with  other  war  corre- 
spondents, was  in  an  old  white  chateau  between  St.-Pol 
and  Hesdin,  from  which  we  motored  out  to  the  line.  Arras 
way  or  Vimy  way,  for  those  walks  in  Queer  Street.  The 
contrast  of  our  retreat  with  that  Armageddon  beyond 
was  profound  and  bewildering.  Behind  the  old  white 
house  were  winding  walks  through  little  woods  beside 
the  stream  which  Henry  crossed  on  his  way  to  Agincourt; 
tapestried  in  early  spring  with  bluebells  and  daffodils 
and  all  the  flowers  that  Ronsard  wove  into  his  verse  in 
the  springtime  of  France.  Birds  sang  their  love-songs 
in  the  thickets.  The  tits  twittered  fearfully  at  the  laugh 
of  the  jay.  All  that  beauty  was  hke  a  sharp  pain  at  one's 
heart  after  hearing  the  close  tumult  of  the  guns  and 
trudging  over  the  blasted  fields  of  war,  in  the  routine  of 
our  task,  week  by  week,  month  by  month. 

"This  makes  for  madness,"  said  a  friend  of  mine,  a 
musician  surprised  to  find  himself  a  soldier.  "In  the 
morning  we  see  boys  with  their  heads  blown  off"" — that 
morning  beyond  the  Point  du  Jour  and  Thelus  we  had 
passed  a  group  of  headless  boys,  and  another  coming  up 
stared  at  them  with  a  silly  smile  and  said,  "They've 
copped  it  all  right!"  and  went  on  to  the  same  risk;  and 
we  had  crouched  below  mounds  of  earth  when  shells  had 


468  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

scattered  dirt  over  us  and  scared  us  horribly,  so  that  we 
felt  a  little  sick  in  the  stomach — "and  in  the  afternoon 
we  walk  through  this  garden  where  the  birds  are  singing. 
.  .  .  There  is  no  sense  in  it.  It's  just  midsummer  mad- 
ness!" 

But  only  one  of  us  went  really  mad  and  tried  to  cut  his 
throat,  and  died.  One  of  the  best,  as  I  knew  him  at  his 
best. 

IV 

The  battles  of  the  Third  Arm.y  beyond  Arras  petered 
out  and  on  June  7th  there  was  the  battle  of  Messines  and 
Wytschaete  v/hen  the  Second  Army  revealed  its  mastery 
of  organization  and  detail.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a 
vastly  ambitious  scheme  to  capture  the  whole  line  of 
ridges  through  Flanders,  of  which  this  was  the  southern 
hook,  and  then  to  hberate  the  Belgian  coast  as  far  inland 
as  Bruges  by  a  combined  sea-and-land  attack  with  shore- 
going  tanks,  directed  by  the  Fourth  Army.  This  first 
blow  at  the  Messines  Ridge  was  completely  and  wonder- 
fully successful,  due  to  the  explosion  of  seventeen  enor- 
mous mines  under  the  German  positions,  followed  by  an 
attack  "in  depth,"  divisions  passing  through  each  other, 
or  "leap-frogging,"  as  it  was  called,  to  the  final  objectives 
against  an  enemy  demoralized  by  the  earthquake  of  the 
explosions. 

For  two  years  there  had  been  fierce  underground  fight- 
ing at  Hill  60  and  elsewhere,  when  our  tunnelers  saw  the 
Germans  had  listened  to  one  another's  workings,  racing 
to  strike  through  first  to  their  enemies'  galleries  and  touch 
off'  their  high-explosive  charges.  Our  miners,  aided  by 
the  magnificent  work  of  Australian  and  Canadian  tunnel- 
ers, had  beaten  the  enemy  into  sheer  terror  of  their  method 
of  fighting  and  they  had  abandoned  it,  beheving  that  we 
had  also.     But  we  did  not,  as  they  found  to  their  cost. 

I  had  seen  the  working  of  the  tunnelers  up  by  Hill  70 
and  elsewhere.  I  had  gone  into  the  darkness  of  the 
timnels,  crouching  low,  striking  my  steel  hat  with  sharp, 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  469 

spine-jarring  knocks  against  the  low  beams  overhead, 
coming  into  galleries  where  one  could  stand  upright  and 
walk  at  ease  in  electric  Hght,  hearing  the  vibrant  hum  of 
great  engines,  the  murmur  of  men's  voices  in  dark  crypts, 
seeing  numbers  of  men  sleeping  on  bunks  in  the  gloom  of 
caverns  close  beneath  the  German  lines,  and  Hstening 
through  a  queer  little  instrument  called  a  microphone, 
by  which  I  heard  the  scuffle  of  German  feet  in  German 
galleries  a  thousand  yards  away,  the  dropping  of  a  pick 
or  shovel,  the  knocking  out  of  German  pipes  against 
charcoal  stoves.  It  was  by  that  listening  instrum.ent, 
more  perfect  than  the  enemy's,  that  we  had  beaten  him, 
and  by  the  grim  determination  of  those  underground  men 
of  ours,  whose  skin  was  the  color  of  the  chalk  in  which  they 
worked,  who  coughed  in  the  dampness  of  the  caves,  and 
who  packed  high  explosives  at  the  shaft-heads — hundreds 
of  tons  of  it — ^for  the  moment  when  a  button  should  be 
touched  far  away,  and  an  electric  current  would  pass 
down  a  wire,  and  the  enemy  and  his  works  would  be 
blown  into  dust. 

That  moment  came  at  Hill  60  and  sixteen  other  places 
below  the  Wytschaete  and  Messines  Ridge  at  three-thirty 
on  the  morning  of  June  7th,  after  a  quiet  night  of  war, 
when  a  few  of  our  batteries  had  fired  in  a  desultory  way 
and  the  enemy  had  sent  over  some  flocks  of  gas-shells, 
and  before  the  dawn  I  heard  the  cocks  crow  on  Kemmel 
Hill.  I  saw  the  seventeen  mines  go  up,  and  earth  and 
flame  gush  out  of  them  as  though  the  fires  of  hell  had  risen. 
A  terrible  sight,  as  the  work  of  men  against  their  fellow- 
creatures.  ...  It  was  the  signal  for  seven  hundred  and 
fifty  of  our  heavy  guns  and  two  thousand  of  our  field- 
guns  to  open  fire,  and  behind  a  moving  wall  of  bursting 
shells  English,  Irish,  and  New  Zealand  soldiers  moved 
forward  in  dense  waves.  It  was  almost  a  "walk-over." 
Only  here  and  there  groups  of  Germans  served  their 
machine-guns  to  the  death.  Most  of  the  living  were 
stupefied  am.id  their  dead  in  the  upheaved  trenches, 
glashed  woods,  and  deepest  dugouts,     I  walked  to  the 


470  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

edge  of  the  mine-craters  and  stared  into  their  great  gulfs, 
wondering  how  many  German  bodies  had  been  engulfed 
there.  The  following  day  I  walked  through  Wytschaete 
Wood  to  the  ruins  of  the  Hospice  on  the  ridge.  In  1914 
some  of  our  cavalry  had  passed  this  way  when  the  Hos- 
pice was  a  big  red-brick  building  with  wings  and  out- 
houses and  a  large  community  of  nuns  and  children. 
Through  my  glasses  I  had  often  seen  its  ruins  from  Kem- 
mel  Hill  and  the  Scherpenberg.  Now  nothing  was  left 
but  a  pile  of  broken  bricks,  not  very  high.  Our  losses 
were  comparatively  small,  though  some  brave  men  had 
died,  including  Major  Willie  Redmond,  whose  death  in 
Wytschaete  Wood  was  heard  with  grief  in  Ireland. 
LudendorfF  admits  the  severity  of  the  blow: 
"The  moral  effect  of  the  explosions  was  simply  stag- 
gering. .  .  .  The  7th  of  June  cost  us  dear,  and,  owing  to 
the  success  of  the  enemy  attack,  the  price  we  paid  was 
very  heavy.  Here,  too,  it  was  many  days  before  the 
front  was  again  secure.  The  British  army  did  not  press 
its  advantage;  apparently  it  only  intended  to  improve 
its  position  for  the  launching  of  the  great  Flanders  offen- 
sive. It  thereupon  resumed  operations  between  the  old 
Arras  battlefield  and  also  between  La  Bassee  and  Lens. 
The  object  of  the  enemy  was  to  wear  us  down  and  dis- 
tract our  attention  from  Ypres." 

That  was  true.  The  Canadians  made  heavy  attacks 
at  Lens,  some  of  which  I  saw  from  ground  beyond  Notre 
Dame  de  Lorette  and  the  Vimy  Ridge  and  the  enemy 
country  by  Grenay,  when  those  men  besieged  a  long 
chain  of  mining  villages  which  girdled  Lens  itself,  where 
every  house  was  a  machine-gun  fort  above  deep  tunnels. 
I  saw  them  after  desperate  struggles,  covered  in  clay, 
parched  with  thirst,  gassed,  wounded,  but  indomitable. 
Lens  was  the  Troy  of  the  Canadian  Corps  and  the  Eng- 
lish troops  of  the  First  Army,  and  it  was  only  owing  to 
other  battles  they  were  called  upon  to  fight  in  Flanders 
that  they  had  to  leave  it  at  last  uncaptured,  for  the  enemy 
to  escape. 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  471 

All  this  was  subsidiary  to  the  great  offensive  in  Flan- 
ders, with  its  ambitious  objects.  But  when  the  battles 
of  Flanders  began  the  year  was  getting  past  its  middle 
age,  and  events  on  other  fronts  had  upset  the  strategical 
plan  of  Sir  Douglas  Haig  and  our  High  Command.  The 
failure  and  abandonment  of  the  Nivelle  offensive  in  the 
Champagne  were  disastrous  to  us.  It  liberated  many 
German  divisions  who  could  be  sent  up  to  relieve  ex- 
hausted divisions  in  Flanders.  Instead  of  attacking  the 
enemy  when  he  was  weakening  under  assaults  elsewhere, 
we  attacked  him  when  all  was  quiet  on  the  French  front. 
The  collapse  of  Russia  was  now  happening  and  our  policy 
ought  to  have  been  to  save  men  for  the  tremendous 
moment  of  1918,  when  we  should  need  all  our  strength. 
So  it  seems  certain  now,  though  it  is  easy  to  prophesy 
after  the  event. 

I  went  along  the  coast  as  far  as  Coxyde  and  Nieuport 
and  saw  secret  preparations  for  the  coast  offensive.  We 
were  building  enormous  gun  emplacements  at  Malo-les- 
Bains  for  long-range  naval  guns,  camouflaged  in  sand- 
dunes.  Our  men  were  being  trained  for  fighting  in  the 
dunes.     Our  artillery  positions  were  mapped  out. 

"Three  shots  to  one,  sir,"  said  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson 
to  the  King,  "that's  the  stuff  to  give  them!" 

But  the  Germans  struck  the  first  blow  up  there,  not  of 
importance  to  the  strategical  position,  but  ghastly  to  two 
battalions  of  the  ist  Division,  cut  off  on  a  spit  of  land  at 
Lombartzyde  and  almost  annihilated  under  a  fury  of  fire. 

A.t  this  time  the  enemy  was  developing  his  use  of  a  new 
poison-gas  —  mustard  gas  —  which  raised  blisters  and 
burned  men's  bodies  where  the  vapor  was  condensed 
into  a  reddish  powder  and  blinded  them  for  a  week  or 
more,  if  not  forever,  and  turned  their  lungs  to  water.  I 
saw  hundreds  of  these  cases  in  the  3d  Canadian  casualty 
clearing  station  on  the  coast,  and  there  were  thousands 
all  along  our  front.  At  Oast  Dunkerque,  near  Nieuport, 
I  had  a  whiff  of  it,  and  was  conscious  of  a  burning  sensa- 
tion about  the  lips  and  eyelids,  and  for  a  week  afterward 


472  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

vomited  at  times,  and  was  scared  by  queer  fluttcrlngs  at 
the  heart  which  at  night  seemed  to  have  but  a  feeble  beat. 
It  was  enough  to  ''put  the  wind  up."  Our  men  dreaded 
the  new  danger,  so  mysterious,  so  stealthy  in  its  approach. 
It  was  one  of  the  new  plagues  of  war. 


The  battle  of  Flanders  began  round  Ypres  on  July 
31st,  with  a  greater  intensity  of  artillery  on  our  side  than 
had  ever  been  seen  before  in  this  war  in  spite  of  the 
Somme  and  Messines,  when  on  big  days  of  battle  two 
thousand  guns  opened  fire  on  a  single  corps  front.  The 
enemy  was  strong  also  in  artillery  arranged  in  great 
groups,  often  shifting  to  enfilade  our  lines  of  attack. 
The  natural  strength  of  his  position  along  the  ridges, 
which  were  Hke  a  great  bony  hand  outstretched  through 
Flanders,  with  streams  or  "beeks," -as  they  are  called, 
flowing  in  the  valleys  which  ran  between  the  fingers  of 
that  clawlike  range,  were  strengthened  by  chains  of  little 
concrete  forts  or  "pill-boxes,"  as  our  soldiers  called  them, 
so  arranged  that  they  could  defend  one  another  by  enfilade 
machine-gun  fire.  These  were  held  by  garrisons  of  ma- 
chine-gunners of  proved  resolution,  whose  duty  was  to 
break  up  our  waves  of  attack  until,  even  if  successful  in 
gaining  ground,  only  small  bodies  of  survivors  would  be 
in  a  position  to  resist  the  counter-attacks  launched  by 
German  divisions  farther  back.  The  strength  of  the  pill- 
boxes made  of  concrete  two  inches  thick  resisted  every- 
thing but  the  direct  hit  of  heavy  shells,  and  they  were  not 
easy  targets  at  long  range.  The  garrisons  within  them 
fought  often  with  the  utmost  courage,  even  when  sur- 
rounded, and  again  and  again  this  method  of  defense 
proved  terribly  effective  against  the  desperate  heroic 
assaults  of  British  infantry. 

What  our  men  had  suffered  in  earlier  battles  was  sur- 
passed by  what  they  were  now  called  upon  to  endure. 
All  the  agonies  of  war  which  I  have  attempted  to  describe 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  473 

were  piled  up  in  those  fields  of  Flanders.  There  was 
nothing  missing  in  the  list  of  war's  abominations.  A  few 
days  after  the  battle  began  the  rains  began,  and  hardly- 
ceased  for  four  months.  Night  after  night  the  skies 
opened  and  let  down  steady  torrents,  which  turned  all 
that  country  into  one  great  bog  of  slime.  Those  little 
rivers  or  "beeks,"  which  ran  between  the  knobby  fingers 
of  the  clawlike  range  of  ridges,  were  blown  out  of  their 
channels  and  slopped  over  into  broad  swamps.  The  hur- 
ricanes of  artillery  fire  which  our  gunners  poured  upon 
the  enemy  positions  for  twenty  miles  in  depth  churned  up 
deep  shell-craters  which  intermingled  and  made  pits 
which  the  rains  and  floods  filled  to  the  brim.  The  only 
way  of  walking  was  by  "duck-boards,"  tracks  laid  down 
across  the  bogs  under  enemy  fire,  smashed  up  day  by  day, 
laid  down  again  under  cover  of  darkness.  Along  a  duck- 
board  walk  men  must  march  in  single  file,  and  if  one  of 
our  men,  heavily  laden  in  his  fighting-kit,  stumbled  on 
those  greasy  boards  (as  all  of  them  stumbled  at  every  few 
yards)  and  fell  off,  he  sank  up  to  his  knees,  often  up  to 
his  waist,  sometimes  up  to  his  neck,  in  mud  and  water. 
If  he  were  wounded  when  he  fell,  and  darkness  was  about 
him,  he  could  only  cry  to  God  or  his  pals,  for  he  was 
helpless  otherwise.  One  of  our  divisions  of  Lancashire 
men — the  66th — took  eleven  hours  in  making  three  miles 
or  so  out  of  Ypres  across  that  ground  on  their  way  to 
attack,  and  then,  in  spite  of  their  exhaustion,  attacked. 
Yet  week  after  week,  month  after  month,  our  masses  of 
men,  almost  every  division  in  the  British  army  at  one 
time  or  another,  struggled  on  through  that  Slough  of  De- 
spond, capturing  ridge  after  ridge,  until  the  heights  at 
Passchendaele  were  stormed  and  won,  though  even  then 
the  Germans  clung  to  Staden  and  Westroosebeeke  when 
all  our  eflTorts  came  to  a  dead  halt,  and  that  Belgian  coast 
attack  was  never  launched. 

Sir  Douglas  Haig  thinks  that  some  of  the  descriptions 
of  that  six  months'  horror  were  "exaggerated."  As  a 
man  who  knows  something  of  the  value  of  words,  and  who 


474  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

saw  many  of  those  battle  scenes  in  Flanders,  and  went 
out  from  Ypres  many  times  during  those  months  to  the 
Westhoek  Ridge  and  the  Pilkem  Ridge,  to  the  Frezenburg 
and  Inverness  Copse  and  Glencourse  Wood,  and  beyond 
to  Polygon  Wood  and  Passchendaele,  where  his  dead  lay 
in  the  swamps  and  round  the  pill-boxes,  and  where  tanks 
that  had  wallowed  into  the  mire  were  shot  into  scrap-iron 
by  German  gun-fire  (thirty  were  knocked  out  by  direct 
hits  on  the  first  day  of  battle),  and  where  our  own  guns 
were  being  flung  up  by  the  harassing  fire  of  heavy  shells, 
I  say  now  that  nothing  that  has  been  written  is  more  than 
the  pale  Image  of  the  abomination  of  those  battlefields, 
and  that  no  pen  or  brush  has  yet  achieved  the  picture  of 
that  Armageddon  in  which  so  many  of  our  men  perished. 

They  were  months  of  ghastly  endurance  to  gunners 
when  batteries  sank  up  to  their  axles  as  I  saw  them  often 
while  they  fired  almost  unceasingly  for  days  and  nights 
without  sleep,  and  were  living  targets  of  shells  which  burst 
about  them.  They  were  months  of  battle  in  which  our 
men  advanced  through  slime  into  slime,  under  the  slash 
of  machine-gun  bullets,  shrapnel,  and  high  explosives,  wet 
to  the  skin,  chilled  to  the  bone,  plastered  up  to  the  eyes 
in  mud,  with  a  dreadful  way  back  for  walking  wounded, 
and  but  little  chance  sometimes  for  wounded  who  could 
not  walk.  The  losses  in  many  of  these  battles  amounted 
almost  to  annihilation  to  many  battalions,  and  whole 
divisions  lost  as  much  as  50  per  cent,  of  their  strength 
after  a  few  days  in  action,  before  they  were  "relieved.'* 
Those  were  dreadful  losses.  Napoleon  said  that  no 
body  of  men  could  lose  more  than  25  per  cent,  of  their 
fighting  strength  in  an  action  without  being  broken  in 
spirit.  Our  men  lost  double  that,  and  more  than  double, 
but  kept  their  courage,  though  in  some  cases  they  lost 
their  hope. 

The  55th  Division  of  Lancashire  men.  In  their  attacks 
on  a  line  of  pill-boxes  called  Plum  Farm,  Schuler  Farm, 
and  Square  Farm,  below  the  Gravenstafel  Spur,  lost  3,840 
men  in  casualties  out  of  6,049.      Those  were  not  uncom- 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  475 

mon  losses.  They  were  usual  losses.  One  day's  fighting 
in  Flanders  (on  October  4th)  cost  the  British  army  ten 
thousand  casualties,  and  they  were  considered  "Hght" 
by  the  Higher  Command  in  relation  to  the  objects 
achieved. 

General  Harper  of  the  51st  (Highland)  Division  told 
me  that  in  his  opinion  the  official  communiques  and  the 
war  correspondents'  articles  gave  only  one  side  of  the 
picture  of  war  and  were  too  glowing  in  their  optimism. 
(I  did  not  tell  him  that  my  articles  were  accused  of  being 
black  in  pessimism,  pervading  gloom.)  **We  tell  the 
public,"  he  said,  "that  an  enemy  division  has  been  'shat- 
tered.' That  is  true.  But  so  is  mine.  One  of  my  brigades 
has  lost  eightj^-seven  officers  and  two  thousand  men  since 
the  spring."  He  protested  that  there  was  not  enough 
liaison  between  the  fighting-officers  and  the  Higher  Com- 
mand, and  could  not  blame  them  for  their  hatred  of  "the 
Staff." 

The  story  of  the  two  Irish  divisions — the  36th  Ulster 
and  i6th  (Nationalist) — in  their  fighting  on  August  i6th 
is  black  in  tragedy.  They  were  left  in  the  line  for  sixteen 
days  before  the  battle  and  were  shelled  and  gassed  inces- 
santly as  they  crouched  in  wet  ditches.  Every  day 
groups  of  men  were  blown  to  bits,  until  the  ditches  were 
bloody  and  the  living  lay  by  the  corpses  of  their  comrades. 
Every  day  scores  of  wounded  crawled  back  through  the 
bogs,  if  they  had  the  strength  to  crawl.  Before  the 
attack  on  August  i6th  the  Ulster  Division  had  lost  nearly 
two  thousand  men.  Then  they  attacked  and  lost  two 
thousand  more,  and  over  one  hundred  officers.  The  i6th 
Division  lost  as  many  men  before  the  attack  and  more 
officers.  The  8th  Dublins  had  been  annihilated  in  hold- 
ing the  line.  On  the  night  before  the  battle  hundreds*of 
men  were  gassed.  Then  their  comrades  attacked  and 
lost  over  two  thousand  more,  and  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
two  officers.  All  the  ground  below  two  knolls  of  earth 
called  Hill  35  and  Hill  37,  which  were  defended  by  Ger- 
man  pill-boxes  called   Pond   Farm  and  Gallipoli,  Beck 


476  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

House  and  Borry  Farm,  became  an  Irish  shambles.  In 
spite  of  their  dreadful  losses  the  survivors  in  the  Irish 
battalion  went  forward  to  the  assault  with  desperate 
valor  on  the  morning  of  August  i6th,  surrounded  the 
pill-boxes,  stormed  them  through  blasts  of  machine-gun 
fire,  and  toward  the  end  of  the  day  small  bodies  of  these 
men  had  gained  a  footing  on  the  objectives  which  they 
had  been  asked  to  capture,  but  were  then  too  weak  to 
resist  German  counter-attacks.  The  7th  and  8th  Royal 
Irish  Fusiliers  had  been  almost  exterminated  in  their 
efforts  to  dislodge  the  enemy  from  Hill  37.  They  lost 
seventeen  officers  out  of  twenty-one,  and  64  per  cent,  of 
their  men.  One  company  of  four  officers  and  one  hun- 
dred men,  ordered  to  capture  the  concrete  fort  known  as 
Borry  Farm,  at  all  cost,  lost  four  officers  and  seventy 
men.  The  9th  Dublins  lost  fifteen  officers  out  of  seven- 
teen, and  66  per  cent,  of  their  men. 

The  two  Irish  divisions  were  broken  to  bits,  and  their 
brigadiers  called  it  murder.  They  were  violent  in  their 
denunciation  of  the  Fifth  Army  for  having  put  their  men 
into  the  attack  after  those  thirteen  days  of  heavy  shelling, 
and  after  the  battle  they  complained  that  they  were  cast 
aside  like  old  shoes,  no  care  being  taken  for  the  comfort 
of  the  men  who  had  survived.  No  motor-lorries  were 
sent  to  meet  them  and  bring  them  down,  but  they  had  to 
tramp  back,  exhausted  and  dazed.  The  remnants  of  the 
i6th  Division,  the  poor,  despairing  remnants,  were  sent, 
without  rest  or  baths,  straight  into  the  Hne  again,  down 
south. 

I  found  a  general  opinion  among  officers  and  men,  not 
only  of  the  Irish  Division,  under  the  command  of  the 
Fifth  Army,  that  they  had  been  the  victims  of  atrocious 
staff-work,  tragic  in  its  consequences.  From  what  I  saw 
of  some  of  the  Fifth  Army  staff-officers  I  was  of  the  same 
opinion.  Some  of  these  young  gentlemen,  and  some  of 
the  elderly  officers,  were  arrogant  and  supercilious  with- 
out revealing  any  symptoms  of  intelligence.  If  they  had 
wisdom  it  was  deeply  camouflaged  by  an  air  of  ineffi- 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  477 

clency.  If  they  had  knowledge  they  hid  it  as  a  secret  of 
their  own.  General  Gough,  commanding  the  Fifth  Army 
in  Flanders,  and  afterward  north  and  south  of  St.-Quen- 
tin,  where  the  enemy  broke  through,  was  extremely  cour- 
teous, of  most  amiable  character,  with  a  high  sense  of 
duty.  But  in  Flanders,  if  not  personally  responsible  for 
many  tragic  happenings,  he  was  badly  served  by  some  of 
his  subordinates;  and  battalion  officers  and  divisional 
staffs  raged  against  the  v/hole  of  the  Fifth  Army  organi- 
zation, or  lack  of  organization,  with  an  extreme  passion 
of  speech. 

"You  must  be  glad  to  leave  Flanders,"  I  said  to  a 
group  of  officers  trekking  toward  the  Cambrai  salient. 

One  of  them  answered,  violently: 

"God  be  thanked  we  are  leaving  the  Fifth  Army  area!" 

In  an  earlier  chapter  of  this  book  I  have  already  paid 
a  tribute  to  the  Second  Army,  and  especially  to  Sir  John 
Harington,  its  chief  of  staff.  There  was  a  thoroughness 
of  method,  a  minute  attention  to  detail,  a  care  for  the 
comfort  and  spirit  of  the  men  throughout  the  Second 
Army  staff  which  did  at  least  inspire  the  troops  with  the 
belief  that  whatever  they  did  in  the  fighting-hnes  had 
been  prepared,  and  would  be  supported,  with  every  pos- 
sible help  that  organization  could  provide.  That  belief 
was  founded  not  upon  fine  words  spoken  on  parade,  but 
by  strenuous  work,  a  driving  zeal,  and  the  fine  intelli- 
gence of  a  chief  of  staff  whose  brain  was  like  a  high-power 
engine. 

I  remember  a  historic  little  scene  in  the  Second  Army 
headquarters  at  Cassel,  in  a  room  where  many  of  the 
great  battles  had  been  planned,  when  Sir  John  Harington 
made  the  dramatic  announcement  that  Sir  Herbert 
Plumer,  and  he,  as  General  Plum.er's  chief  of  staff,  had 
been  ordered  to  Italy — in  the  middle  of  a  battle — to 
report  on  the  situation  which  had  become  so  grave  there. 
He  expressed  his  regret  that  he  should  have  to  leave 
Flanders  without  completing  all  his  plans,  but  was  glad 
that  Passchendaele  had  been  captured  before  his  going. 


478  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

In  front  of  him  was  the  map  of  the  great  range  from 
Wytschaete  to  Staden,  and  he  laid  his  hand  upon  it  and 
smiled  and  said:  "I  often  used  to  think  how  much  of  that 
range  we  should  get  this  year.  Now  it  is  nearly  all  ours." 
He  thanked  the  war  correspondents  for  all  their  articles, 
which  had  been  very  helpful  to  the  army,  and  said  how 
glad  he  had  been  to  have  our  co-operation. 

"It  was  my  ambition,"  he  said,  speaking  with  some 
emotion,  "to  make  cordial  relations  between  battalion 
officers  and  the  staff,  and  to  get  rid  of  that  criticism 
(sometimes  just)  which  has  been  directed  against  the 
staff.  The  Second  Army  has  been  able  to  show  the  fight- 
ing soldiers  that  the  success  of  a  battle  depends  greatly 
on  efficient  staff-work,  and  has  inspired  them  with  con- 
fidence in  the  preparations  and  organization  behind  the 
Imes. 

Yet  it  seemed  to  me,  in  my  pessimism,  and  seems  to 
me  still,  in  my  memory  of  all  that  ghastly  fighting,  that 
the  fine  mechanism  of  the  Second  Army  applied  to  those 
battles  in  Flanders  was  utterly  misspent,  that  after  the 
first  heavy  rains  had  fallen  the  offensive  ought  to  have 
been  abandoned,  and  that  it  was  a  frightful  error  of  judg- 
ment to  ask  masses  of  men  to  attack  in  conditions  where 
they  had  not  a  dog's  chance  of  victory,  except  at  a  cost 
which  made  it  of  Pyrrhic  irony. 

Nevertheless,  it  was  wearing  the  enemy  out,  as  well  as 
our  own  strength  in  man-power.  He  could  less  afford 
to  lose  his  one  man  than  we  could  our  three,  now  that  the 
United  States  had  entered  the  war.  Ludendorff  has  de- 
scribed the  German  agony,  and  days  of  battle  wiiich  he 
calls  "terrific,"  inflicting  "enormous  loss"  upon  his 
armies  and  increasing  his  anxiety  at  the  "reduction  of 
our  fighting  strength." 

"Enormous  masses  of  ammunition,  the  like  of  which 
no  mortal  mind  before  the  war  had  conceived,  were  hurled 
against  human  beings  who  lay,  eking  out  but  a  bare  exist- 
ence, scattered  in  shell-holes  that  were  deep  in  slime. 
The  terror  of  it  surpassed  even  that  of  the  shell-pitted 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  479 

field  before  Verdun.  This  was  not  life;  it  was  agony 
unspeakable.  And  out  of  the  universe  of  slime  the  at- 
tacker wallowed  forward,  slowly  but  continually,  and  in 
dense  masses.  Time  and  again  the  enemy,  struck  by  the 
hail  of  our  projectiles  in  the  fore  field,  collapsed,  and  our 
lonely  men  in  the  shell-holes  breathed  again.  Then  the 
mass  came  on.  Rifle  and  machine-gun  were  beslimed. 
The  struggle  was  man  to  man,  and — only  too  often — it 
was  the  mass  that  won. 

"What  the  German  soldier  accomplished,  lived  through, 
and  suffered  during  the  Flanders  battle  will  stand  in  his 
honor  for  all  time  as  a  brazen  monument  that  he  set  him- 
self with  his  own  hands  on  enemy  soil! 

"The  enemy's  losses,  too,  were  heavy.  When,  in  the 
spring  of  191 8,  we  occupied  the  battlefield,  it  presented 
a  horrible  spectacle  with  its  many  unburied  dead.  Their 
number  ran  into  thousands.  Two-thirds  of  them  were 
enemy  dead;  one-third  were  German  soldiers  who  had 
met  here  a  hero's  death. 

"And  yet  the  truth  must  be  told;  individual  units  no 
longer  surmounted  as  before  the  demoralizing  influences 
of  the  defensive  campaign. 

"October  26th  and  30th  and  November  6th  and  loth 
were  also  days  of  pitched  battle  of  the  heaviest  kind. 
The  enemy  stormed  like  a  wild  bull  against  the  iron  wall 
that  kept  him  at  a  distance  from  our  U-boat  base.  He 
hurled  his  weight  against  the  Houthulst  Wood;  he  hurled 
it  against  Poelcapelle,  Passchendaele,  Becelaere,  Ghelu- 
velt,  and  Zandvoorde;  at  very  many  points  he  dented 
the  line.  It  seemed  as  if  he  would  charge  down  the  wall; 
but,  although  a  slight  tremor  passed  through  its  founda- 
tion, the  wall  held.  The  impressions  that  I  continued  to 
receive  were  extremely  grave.  Tactically  everything  had 
been  done;  the  fore  field  was  good.  Our  artillery  prac- 
tice had  materially  improved.  Behind  nearly  every  fight- 
ing-division there  stood  a  second,  as  rear  wave.  In  the 
third  line,  too,  there  were  still  reserves.  We  knew  that 
the  wear  and  tear  of  the  enemy's  forces  was  high.     But 


4fio  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

we  also  knew  that  the  enemy  was  extraordinarily  strong 
and,  what  was  equally  important,  possessed  extraordinary 
will-power." 

That  was  the  impression  of  the  cold  brain  directing  the 
machinery  of  war  from  German  headquarters.  More 
human  and  more  tragic  is  a  letter  of  an  unknown  German 
officer  which  we  found  among  hundreds  of  others,  telling 
the  same  tale,  in  the  mud  of  the  battlefield: 

**If  it  were  not  for  the  men  who  have  been  spared  me 
on  this  fierce  day  and  are  lying  around  me,  and  looking 
timidly  at  me,  I  should  shed  hot  and  bitter  tears  over  the 
terrors  that  have  menaced  me  during  these  hours.  On 
the  morning  of  September  i8th  my  dugout  containing 
seventeen  men  was  shot  to  pieces  over  our  heads.  I  am 
the  only  one  who  withstood  the  maddening  bombardment 
of  three  days  and  still  survives.  You  cannot  imagine 
the  frightful  mental  torments  I  have  undergone  in  those 
few  hours.  After  crawling  out  through  the  bleeding  rem- 
nants of  my  comrades,  and  through  the  smoke  and  debris, 
wandering  and  running  in  the  midst  of  the  raging  gun-fire 
in  search  of  a  refuge,  I  am  now  awaiting  death  at  any 
moment.  You  do  not  know  what  Flanders  means.  Flan- 
ders means  endless  human  endurance.  Flanders  means 
blood  and  scraps  of  human  bodies.  Flanders  means 
heroic  courage  and  faithfulness  even  unto  death." 

To  British  and  to  Germans  it  meant  the  same. 


VI 

During  the  four  and  a  half  months  of  that  fighting  the 
war  correspondents  were  billeted  in  the  old  town  of 
Cassel,  where,  perched  on  a  hill  which  looks  over  a 
wide  stretch  of  Flanders,  through  our  glasses  we  could 
see  the  sand-dunes  beyond  Dunkirk  and  with  the  naked 
eyes  the  whole  vista  of  the  battle-line  round  Ypres  and 
in  the  wide  curve  all  the  countryside  lying  between  Aire 
and  Hazebrouck  and  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette.  My  billet 
was  in  a  monastery  for  old  priests,  on  the  eastern  edge  of 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  481 

the  town,  and  at  night  my  window  was  Hghted  by  distant 
shell-fire,  and  I  gazed  out  to  a  sky  of  darkness  rent  by 
vivid  flashes,  bursts  of  red  flame,  and  rockets  rising  high. 
The  priests  used  to  tap  at  my  door  when  I  came  back 
from  the  battlefields  all  muddy,  with  a  slime-plastered 
face,  writing  furiously,  and  an  old  padre  used  to  plague 
me  like  that,  saying: 

"What  news?  It  goes  well,  eh?  Not  too  well,  per- 
haps!    Alas!  it  is  a  slaughter  on  both  sides." 

"It  is  all  your  fault,"  I  said  once,  chaffingly,  to  get  rid 
of  him.     "You  do  not  pray  enough." 

He  grasped  my  wrist  with  his  skinny  old  hand. 

"Monsieur,"  he  whispered,  "after  eighty  years  I  nearly 
lose  my  faith  in  God.  That  is  terrible,  is  it  not?  Why 
does  not  God  give  us  victory?  Alas!  perhaps  we  have 
sinned  too  much!" 

One  needed  great  faith  for  courage  then,  and  my  cour- 
age (never  much  to  boast  about)  ebbed  low  those  days, 
when  I  agonized  over  our  losses  and  saw  the  suflTering  of 
our  men  and  those  foul  swamps  where  the  bodies  of  our 
boys  lay  in  pools  of  slime,  vividly  colored  by  the  metallic 
vapors  of  high  explosives,  beside  the  gashed  tree-stumps; 
and  the  mangled  corpses  of  Germans  who  had  died  out- 
side their  pill-boxes;  and  when  I  saw  dead  horses  on  the 
roads  out  of  Ypres,  and  transport  drivers  dead  beside 
their  broken  wagons,  and  officers  of  ours  with  the  look  of 
doomed  men,  nerve-shaken,  soul-stricken,  in  captured 
blockhouses,  where  I  took  a  nip  of  whisky  with  them 
now  and  then  before  they  attacked  again;  and  groups  of 
dazed  prisoners  coming  down  the  tracks  through  their 
own  harrowing  fire;  and  always,  always,  streams  of 
wounded  by  tens  of  thousands. 

There  was  an  old  mill-house  near  Vlamertlnghe,  be- 
yond Goldfish  Chateau,  which  was  made  into  a  casualty 
clearing  station,  and  scores  of  times  when  I  passed  it  I 
saw  it  crowded  with  the  "walking  wounded,"  who  had 
trudged  down  from  the  fighting-line,  taking  eleven  hours, 
fourteen  hours  sometimes,  to  get  so  far,    They  were  no 


4^2  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

longer  "cheerful"  like  the  gay  lads  who  came  lightly- 
wounded  out  of  earlier  battles,  glad  of  life,  excited  by 
their  luck.  They  were  silent,  shivering,  stricken  men; 
boys  in  age,  but  old  and  weary  in  the  knowledge  of  war. 
The  slime  of  the  battlefields  had  engulfed  them.  Their 
clothes  were  plastered  to  their  bodies.  Their  faces  and 
hands  were  coated  with  that  whitish  clay.  Their  steel 
hats  and  rifles  were  caked  with  it.  Their  eyes,  brooding, 
were  strangely  alive  in  those  corpselike  figures  of  mud 
who  huddled  round  charcoal  stoves  or  sat  motionless  on 
wooden  forms,  waiting  for  ambulances.  Yet  they  were 
stark  in  spirit  still. 

"Only  the  mud  beat  us,"  they  said.  Man  after  man 
said  that. 

"  We  should  have  gone  much  farther  except  for  the  mud.*' 

Along  the  Menin  road  there  were  wayside  dressing 
stations  for  wounded,  with  surgeons  at  work,  and  I  saw 
the  same  scenes  there.  They  were  not  beyond  the  danger 
zone.  Doctors  and  orderlies  were  killed  by  long-range 
shells.  Wounded  were  wounded  again  or  finished  oflp. 
Some  ambulances  were  blown  to  bits.  A  colonel  who 
had  been  standing  in  talk  with  a  doctor  was  killed  half- 
way through  a  sentence. 

There  was  never  a  day  in  which  Ypres  was  not  shelled 
by  long-range  high  velocities  which  came  howling  over- 
head as  I  heard  them  scores  of  times  in  passing  through 
those  ruins  with  gas-mask  at  the  alert,  according  to  orders, 
and  steel  hat  strapped  on,  and  a  deadly  sense  of  nostalgia 
because  of  what  was  happening  in  the  fields  of  horror  that 
lay  beyond.  Yet  to  the  soldier  farther  up  the  Menin 
road  Ypres  was  sanctuary  and  God's  heaven. 

The  little  old  town  of  Cassel  on  the  hill — where  once  a 
Duke  of  York  marched  up  and  then  marched  down  again 
— was  beyond  shell-range,  though  the  enemy  tried  to 
reach  it  and  dropped  twelve-inch  shells  (which  make 
holes  deep  enough  to  bury  a  coach  and  horses)  round  its 
base.  There  is  an  inn  there— the  Hotel  du  Sauvage — 
which  belongs  now  to  English  history,  and  Scottish  and 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  483 

Irish  and  Welsh  and  Austrahan  and  Canadian.  It  was 
the  last  place  along  the  road  to  Ypres  where  men  who 
loved  lite  could  get  a  dinner  sitting  with  their  knees 
below  a  table-cloth,  with  candle-light  glinting  in  glasses, 
while  outside  the  windows  the  flickering  fires  of  death 
told  them  how  short  might  be  their  tarrying  in  the  good 
places  of  the  world.  This  was  a  good  place  where  the 
blinds  were  pulled  down  by  Madame,  who  understood. 
Behind  the  desk  was  Mademoiselle  Suzanne,  "a  dainty 
rogue  in  porcelain,"  with  wonderfully  bright  eyes  and  just 
a  httle  greeting  of  a  smile  for  any  young  officer  who  looked 
her  way  trying  to  get  that  greeting,  because  it  was  ever 
so  long  since  he  had  seen  a  pretty  face  and  might  be  ever 
so  long  again.  Sometimes  it  was  a  smile  met  in  the  mir- 
ror against  the  wall,  to  which  Suzanne  looked  to  touch  her 
curls  and  see,  like  the  Lady  of  Shalott,  the  pictures  of  Hfe 
that  passed.  A  man  would  tilt  his  chair  to  get  that  angle 
of  vision.  Outside,  on  these  nights  of  war,  it  was  often 
blusterous,  very  dark,  wet  with  heavy  rain.  The  door 
opened,  and  other  officers  came  in  with  waterproofs  sag- 
ging round  their  legs  and  top-boots  muddy  to  the  tags, 
abashed  because  they  made  pools  of  water  on  pohshed 
boards. 

**  Pardon,  Madame." 

**(7<3  ne  fait  rien,  Monsieur.** 

There  was  a  klip-klop  of  horses'  hoofs  in  the  yard.  I 
thought  of  D'Artagnan  and  the  Musketeers  who  might 
have  ridden  into  this  very  yard,  strode  into  this  very 
room,  on  their  way  to  Dunkirk  or  Calais.  Madame 
played  the  piano  remarkably  well,  classical  music  of  all 
kinds,  and  any  accompaniment  to  any  song.  Our  young 
officers  sang.  Some  of  them  touched  the  piano  with  a 
loving  touch  and  said,  "Ye  gods,  a  piano  again!"  and 
played  old  melodies  or  merry  ragtime.  Before  Pass- 
chendaele  was  taken  a  Canadian  boy  brought  a  fiddle 
with  him,  and  played  last  of  all,  after  other  tunes,  "The 
Long,  Long  Trail,"  which  his  comrades  sang. 

"Come  and  play  to  us  again,"  said  Madame. 


4^4  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"If  I  come  back,"  said  the  boy. 

He  did  not  come  back  along  the  road  through  Ypres  to 
Cassel. 

From  the  balcony  one  could  see  the  nightbirds  fly.  On 
every  moonlight  night  German  raiders  were  about  bomb- 
ing our  camps  and  villages.  One  could  see  just  below 
the  hill  how  the  bombs  crashed  into  St.-Marie  Capelle 
and  many  hamlets  where  British  soldiers  lay,  and  where 
peasants  and  children  were  killed  with  them.  For  some 
strange  reason  Cassel  itself  was  never  bombed. 

"We  are  a  nest  of  spies,"  said  some  of  the  inhabitants, 
but  others  had  faith  in  a  miraculous  statue,  and  still 
others  in  Sir  Herbert  Plumer. 

Once  when  a  big  shell  burst  very  close  I  looked  at 
Mademoiselle  Suzanne  behind  the  desk.  She  did  not 
show  fear  by  the  flicker  of  an  ej^elid,  though  oflicers  in  the 
room  were  startled. 

*' Fous  navez  pas  peur,  meme  de  la  mort?''  ("You  are 
not  afraid,  even  of  death?")  I  asked. 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

*' Je  men  fiche  de  la  mort!"  ("I  don't  care  a  damn  for 
death!") 

The  Hotel  du  Sauvage  was  a  pleasant  rendezvous,  but 
barred  for  a  time  to  young  gentlemen  of  the  air  force, 
who  lingered  too  long  there  sometimes  and  were  noisy. 
It  was  barred  to  all  oflficers  for  certain  hours  of  the  day 
without  special  permits  from  the  A.  P.  M.,  who  made 
trouble  in  granting  them.  Three  Scottish  officers  rode 
down  into  Cajsel.  They  had  ridden  down  from  hell-fire 
to  sit  at  a  table  covered  with  a  table-cloth,  and  drink  tea 
in  a  room  again.  They  were  refused  permission,  and  their 
language  to  me  about  the  A.  P.  M.  w\as  unprintable. 
They  desired  his  blood  and  bones.  They  raised  their 
hands  to  heaven  to  send  down  wrath  upon  all  skunks 
dwelling  behind  the  lines  in  luxury  and  denying  any  kind 
of  comfort  to  fighting-men.  They  included  the  P.  M. 
in  their  rage,  and  all  staflF-oflRcers  from  Cassel  to  Boulogne, 
and  away  back  to  Whitehall. 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  485 

To  cheer  up  the  war  correspondents'  mess  when  we 
assembled  at  night  after  miserable  days,  and  when  in  the 
darkness  gusts  of  wind  and  rain  clouted  the  window-panes 
and  distant  gun-fire  rumbled,  or  bombs  were  faUing  in 
near  villages,  telling  of  peasant  girls  killed  in  their  beds 
and  soldiers  mangled  in  wayside  burns,  we  had  the  com- 
pany sometimes  of  an  officer  (a  black-eyed  fellow)  who 
told  merry  little  tales  of  executions  and  prison  happen- 
ings at  which  he  assisted  in  the  course  of  his  duty. 

I  remember  one  about  a  young  officer  sentenced  to  death 
for  cowardice  (there  were  quite  a  number  of  lads  Hke  that). 
He  was  blindfolded  by  a  gas-mask  fixed  on  the  wrong 
way  round,  and  pinioned,  and  tied  to  a  post.  The  firing- 
party  lost  their  nerve  and  their  shots  were  wild.  The 
boy  was  only  wounded,  and  screamed  in  his  mask,  and 
the  A.  P.  M.  had  to  shoot  him  twice  with  his  revolver 
before  he  died. 

That  was  only  one  of  many  Httle  anecdotes  told  by  a 
gentleman  who  seemed  to  like  his  job  and  to  enjoy  these 
reminiscences. 

The  battles  of  Flanders  ended  with  the  capture  of  Pass- 
chendaele  by  the  Canadians,  and  that  year's  fighting  on 
the  western  front  cost  us  800,000  casualties,  and  though 
we  had  dealt  the  enemy  heavy  blows  from  which  he  reeled 
back,  the  drain  upon  our  man-power  was  too  great  for 
what  was  to  happen  next  year,  and  our  men  were  too 
sorely  tried.  For  the  first  time  the  British  army  lost  its 
spirit  of  optimism,  and  there  was  a  sense  of  deadly  de- 
pression among  many  officers  and  men  with  whom  I  came 
in  touch.  They  saw  no  ending  of  the  war,  and  nothing 
except  continuous  slaughter,  such  as  that  in  Flanders. 

Our  men  were  not  mythical  heroes  exalted  by  the  gods 

above   the    limitations    of   nature.     They   were    human 

beings,  with  wives  and  children,  or  mothers  and  sisters, 

whom  they  desired  to  see  again.     They  hated  this  war. 

Death  had  no  allurement  for  them,  except  now  and  then 

as  an  escape  from  intolerable  life  under  fire.     They  would 

have  been  superhuman  if  the}^  had  not  revolted  in  spirit, 
32 


486  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

though  still  faithful  to  discipline,  against  the  foul  condi- 
tions of  warfare  in  the  swamps,  where,  in  spite  of  all  they 
had,  in  that  four  months  or  so  of  fighting,  achieved  the 
greatest  effort  of  human  courage  and  endurance  ever  done 
by  masses  of  men  in  obedience  to  command. 

VII 

At  the  end  of  those  battles  happened  that  surprising, 
audacious  adventure  in  the  Cambral  salient  organized 
by  the  Third  Army  under  General  Byng,  when  on  Novem- 
ber 20,  1917,  squadrons  of  tanks  broke  through  the  Hin- 
denburg  line,  and  infantry  streamed  through  the  breach, 
captured  hundreds  of  guns,  ten  thousand  prisoners,  many 
villages  and  ridges,  and  gave  a  monstrous  shock  to  the 
German  High  Command. 

The  audacity  of  the  adventure  lay  in  the  poverty  of 
man-power  with  which  it  was  attempted  and  supported. 
The  divisions  engaged  had  all  been  through  the  grinding 
mill  of  Flanders  and  were  tired  men.  The  artillery  was 
made  up  largely  of  those  batteries  which  had  been  axle- 
deep  in  Flanders  mud.  It  was  clearly  understood  by 
General  Byng  and  Gen.  Louis  Vaughan,  his  chief  of  staff, 
that  Sir  Douglas  Haig  could  not  afford  to  give  them 
strong  reserves  to  exploit  an}^  success  they  might  gain  by 
surprise  or  to  defend  the  captured  ground  against  certain 
counter-attacks.  It  was  to  be  a  surprise  assault  by  tanks 
and  infantry,  with  the  hope  that  the  cavalry  corps  might 
find  its  gap  at  last  and  sweep  round  Canibrai  before  the 
enemy  could  recover  and  reorganize.  With  other  corre- 
spondents I  saw  Gen.  Louis  Vaughan,  who  expounded  the 
scheme  before  it  was  launched.  That  charming  man, 
with  his  professional  manner,  sweetness  of  speech,  gentle- 
ness of  voice  and  gesture,  like  an  Oxford  don  analyzing 
the  war  correspondence  of  Xenophon,  made  no  secret  of 
the  economy  with  which  the  operation  would  have  to  be 
made. 

"We  must  cut  our  coat  according  to  our  cloth^"  he  said. 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  487 

The  whole  idea  was  to  seize  only  as  much  ground  as 
the  initial  success  could  gain,  and  not  to  press  if  resistance 
became  strong.  It  was  a  gamble,  with  a  chance  of  luck. 
The  cavalry  might  do  nothing,  or  score  a  big  triumph. 
All  depended  on  the  surprise  of  the  tanks.  If  they  were 
discovered  before  the  assault  the  whole  adventure  would 
fail  at  the  start. 

They  had  been  brought  up  secretly  by  night,  four  hun- 
dred of  them,  with  supply-tanks  for  ammunition  and 
petrol  lying  hidden  in  woods  by  day.  So  the  artillery  and 
infantry  and  cavalry  had  been  concentrated  also.  The 
enemy  believed  himself  secure  in  his  Hindenburg  line, 
which  had  been  constructed  behind  broad  hedges  of 
barbed  wire  with  such  wide  ditches  that  no  tank  could 
cross. 

How,  then,  would  tanks  cross  .^  Ah,  that  was  a  little 
trick  which  would  surprise  the  Germans  mightily.  Each 
tank  would  advance  through  the  early  morning  mists 
with  a  bridge  on  its  nose.  The  bridge  was  really  a  big 
"fascine,"  or  bundle  of  fagots  about  a  yard  and  a  half 
in  diameter,  and  controlled  by  a  lever  and  chain  from 
the  interior  of  the  tank.  Having  plowed  through  the 
barbed  wire  and  reached  the  edge  of  the  Hindenburg 
trench,  the  tank  would  drop  the  fascine  into  the  center  of 
the  ditch,  stretch  out  its  long  body,  reach  the  bundle  of 
fagots,  find  support  on  it,  and  use  it  as  a  stepping-stone 
to  the  other  side.     Very  simple  in  idea  and  effect! 

So  it  happened,  and  the  mists  favored  us,  as  I  saw  on 
the  morning  of  the  attack  at  a  little  place  called  Beau- 
mont, near  Villers  Pluich.  The  enemy  was  completely 
surprised,  caught  at  breakfast  in  his  dugouts,  rounded  up 
in  batches.  The  tanks  went  away  through  the  breach 
they  had  made,  with  the  infantry  swarming  round  them, 
and  captured  Havrincourt,  Hermies,  Ribecourt,  Gouzeau- 
court,  Masnieres,  and  Marcoing,  and  a  wide  stretch  of 
country  forming  a  cup  or  amphitheater  below  a  series  of 
low  ridges  south  of  Bourlon  Wood,  where  the  ground  rose 
ao;ain. 


488  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

It  was  a  spectacular  battle,  such  as  we  had  never  seen 
before,  and  during  the  following  days,  when  our  troops 
worked  up  to  Bourlon  Wood  and  through  the  intervening 
villages  of  Anneux,  Graincourt,  Containg,  and  Fontaine 
Notre  Dame,  I  saw  tanks  going  into  action  and  cruising 
about  like  landships,  with  cavalry  patrols  riding  over  open 
ground,  airplanes  flying  low  over  German  territory,  and 
masses  of  infantry  beyond  all  trench-hnes,  and  streams 
of  Hberated  civiHans  trudging  through  the  Hnes  from 
Marcoing.  The  enemy  was  demoralized  the  first  day 
and  made  only  slight  resistance.  The  chief  losses  of 
the  tanks  were  due  to  a  German  major  of  artillery 
who  served  his  own  guns  and  knocked  out  a  baker's 
dozen  of  these  monsters  as  they  crawled  over  the 
Flesquieres  Ridge.  I  saw  them  lying  there  with  the 
blood  and  bones  of  their  pilots  and  crews  within  their 
steel  walls.  It  was  a  Highland  soldier  who  checked  the 
German  major. 

** You're  a  brave  man,"  he  said,  "but  you've  got  to 
dee,"  and  ran  him  through  the  stomach  with  his  bayonet. 
It  was  this  check  at  the  Flesquieres  Ridge,  followed  by 
the  breaking  of  a  bridge  at  Masnieres  under  the  weight 
of  a  tank  and  the  holding  of  a  trench-Une  called  the 
Rumilly  switch  by  a  battaUon  of  Germans  who  raced  to 
it  from  Cambrai  before  our  men  could  capture  it,  which 
thwarted  the  plans  of  the  cavalry.  Our  cavalry  generals 
were  in  consultation  at  their  headquarters,  too  far  back 
to  take  immediate  advantage  of  the  situation.  They 
waited  for  the  capture  of  the  Rumilly  switch,  and  held  up 
masses  of  cavalry  whom  I  saw  riding  through  the  village 
of  Ribecourt,  with  excitement  and  exaltation,  because 
they  thought  that  at  last  their  chance  had  come.  Finally 
orders  were  given  to  cancel  all  previous  plans  to  advance. 
Only  one  squadron,  belonging  to  the  Canadian  Fort  Garry 
Horse  in  General  Seely's  division,  failed  to  receive  the 
order  (their  colonel  rode  after  them,  but  his  horse  slipped 
and  fell  before  he  caught  them  up),  and  it  was  their  day 
.of  heroic  folly.     They  rode   fast   and   made  their  way 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  489 

through  a  gap  in  the  wire  cut  by  the  troopers,  and  came 
under  rifle-  and  machine-gun  lire,  which  wounded  the 
captain  and  several  men. 

The  command  was  carried  on  by  a  young  lieutenant, 
who  rode  with  his  men  until  they  reached  the  camouflaged 
road  southeast  of  the  village  of  Rumill}^,  where  they  went 
through  in  sections  under  the  fire  of  the  enemy  hidden  in 
the  banks.  Here  they  came  up  against  a  battery  of  field- 
guns,  one  of  which  fired  point-blank  at  them.  They 
charged  the  battery,  putting  the  guns  out  of  action  and 
killing  some  of  the  gunners.  Those  who  were  not  de- 
stroyed surrendered,  and  the  prisoners  were  left  to  be 
sent  back  by  the  supports.  The  squadron  then  dealt 
with  the  German  infantry  in  the  neighborhood.  Some  of 
them  fled,  while  some  were  killed  or  surrendered.  All 
these  operations  were  done  at  a  gallop  under  fire  from 
flanking  blockhouses.  The  squadron  then  slowed  down 
to  a  walk  and  took  up  a  position  in  a  sunken  road  one 
kilometer  east  of  Rumilly.  Darkness  crept  down  upon 
them,  and  gradually  they  were  surrounded  by  German 
infantry  with  machine-guns,  so  that  they  were  in  great 
danger  of  capture  or  destruction.  Only  five  of  their 
horses  remained  unhit,  and  the  lieutenant  in  command 
decided  that  they  must  endeavor  to  cut  their  way  through 
and  get  back.  The  horses  were  stampeded  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  enemy  in  order  to  draw  the  machine-gun  fire, 
and  while  these  riderless  horses  galloped  wildly  out  of 
one  end  of  the  sunken  road,  the  officer  and  his  surviving 
troopers  escaped  from  the  other  end.  On  the  way  back 
they  encountered  four  bodies  of  the  enemy,  whom  they 
attacked  and  routed.  On  one  occasion  their  escape  was 
due  to  the  cunning  of  another  young  lieutenant,  who 
spoke  German  and  held  conversations  with  the  enemy  in 
the  darkness,  deceiving  them  as  to  the  identity  of  his 
force  until  they  were  able  to  take  the  German  troops  by 
surprise  and  hack  a  way  through.  This  Heutenant  was 
hit  in  the  face  by  a  bullet,  and  when  he  arrived  back  in 
Masnieres  with  his  men  in  advance  of  the  rear-guard  he 


490  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

was  only  able  to  make  his  report  before  falling  in  a  state 
of  collapse. 

Other  small  bodies  of  cavalry — among  them  the  8th 
Dragoons  and  15th  Hussars — had  wild,  heroic  adventures 
in  the  Cambrai  salient,  where  they  rode  under  blasts  of 
machine-gun  fire  and  rounded  up  prisoners  in  the  ruined 
villages  of  Noyelles  and  Fontaine  Notre  Dame.  Some  of 
them  went  into  the  FoHe  Wood  nearby  and  met  seven 
German  officers  stroUing  about  the  glades,  as  though  no 
war  was  on.  They  took  them  prisoners,  but  had  to  re- 
lease some  of  them  later,  as  they  could  not  be  bothered 
with  them.  Later  they  came  across  six  ammunition- 
wagons  and  destroyed  them.  In  the  heart  of  the  wood 
was  one  of  the  German  divisional  headquarters,  and  one 
of  our  cavalry  officers  dismounted  and  approached  the 
cottage  stealthil)^,  and  looked  through  the  windows.  In- 
side was  a  party  of  German  officers  seated  at  a  table,  with 
beer  mugs  in  front  of  them,  apparently  unconscious  of 
any  danger  near  them.  Our  officer  fired  his  revolver 
through  the  windows  and  then,  Hke  a  schoolboy  who  has 
thrown  a  stone,  ran  away  as  hard  as  he  could  and  joined 
his  troop.     Youthful  folly  of  gallant  hearts! 

After  the  enemy's  surprise  his  resistance  stiffened  and 
he  held  the  village  of  Fontaine  Notre  Dame,  and  Bourlon 
Wood,  on  the  hill  above,  with  strong  rear-guards.  Very 
quickly,  too,  he  brought  new  batteries  into  action,  and 
things  became  unpleasant  in  fields  and  villages  where  our 
men,  as  I  saw  them  on  those  days,  hunted  around  for 
souvenirs  in  German  dugouts  and  found  field-glasses, 
automatic  pistols,  and  other  good  booty. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  the  plan  as  outlined  b}^  Gen.  Louis 
Vaughan,  not  to  exploit  success  farther  than  justified  by 
the  initial  surprise,  was  abandoned  for  a  time.  A  brigade 
of  Guards  was  put  in  to  attack  Fontaine  Notre  Dame, 
and  suffered  heavily  from  machine-gun  fire  before  taking 
it.  The  62d  (Yorkshire)  Division  lost  many  good  men 
in  Bourlon  Village  and  Bourlon  Wood,  into  which  the 
'enemy  poured  gas-shells  and  high  explosives. 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  491 

Then  on  November  30th  the  Germans,  under  the  direc- 
tion of  General  von  Marwitz,  came  back  upon  us  with 
a  tiger's  pounce,  in  a  surprise  attack  which  we  ought  to 
have  anticipated.  I  happened  to  be  on  the  way  to  Gou- 
zeaucourt  early  that  morning,  and,  going  through  the 
village  of  Fins,  next  to  it,  I  saw  men  straggling  back  in 
some  disorder,  and  gun-teams  wedged  in  a  dense  traffic 
moving  in  what  seemed  to  me  the  wrong  direction. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  do,"  said  a  young  gunner  officer. 
"My  battery  has  been  captured  and  I  can't  get  into  touch 
with  the  brigade." 

"What  has  happened?"  I  asked. 

He  looked  at  me  in  surprise. 

"Don't  you  know?     The  enemy  has  broken  through." 

"Broken  through  where?" 

The  gunner  officer  pointed  down  the  road. 

"At  the  present  moment  he's  in  Gouzeaucourt." 

I  went  northward,  and  saw  that  places  like  Hermies  and 
Havrincourt,  which  had  been  peaceful  spots  for  a  few 
days,  were  under  heavy  fire.  Bourlon  Wood  beyond  was 
a  fiery  furnace.  Hell  had  broken  out  again  and  things 
looked  bad.  There  was  a  general  packing  up  of  dumps 
and  field  hospitals  and  heavy  batteries.  In  Gouzeau- 
court and  other  places  our  divisional  and  brigade  head- 
quarters were  caught  napping.  Officers  were  in  their 
pajamas  or  in  their  baths  when  they  heard  the  snap  of 
machine-gun  bullets.  I  saw  the  Guards  go  forward  to 
Gouzeaucourt  for  a  counter-attack.  They  came  along 
munching  apples  and  whistling,  as  though  on  peace 
maneuvers.  Next  day,  after  they  had  gained  back  Gou- 
zeaucourt, I  saw  many  of  them  wounded,  lying  under 
tarpauUns,  all  dirty  and  bloody. 

The  Germans  had  adopted  our  own  way  of  attack. 
They  had  assembled  masses  of  troops  secretly,  moving 
them  forward  by  night  under  the  cover  of  woods,  so  that 
our  air  scouts  saw  no  movement  by  day.  Our  line  was 
weakly  held  along  the  front — the  55th  Division,  thinned 
out  by  losses,  was  holding  a  line  of  thirteen  thousand 


492  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

yards,  three  times  as  much  as  any  troops  can  hold,  in 
safety- — and  the  German  storm-troops,  after  a  short, 
terrific  bombardment,  broke  through  to  a  distance  of  five 
miles. 

Our  tired  men,  who  had  gained  the  first  victory,  fought 
heroic  rear-guard  actions  back  from  Masnieres  and  Mar- 
coing,  and  back  from  Bourlon  Wood  on  the  northern  side 
of  the  salient.  They  made  the  enemy  pay  a  high  price 
in  blood  for  the  success  of  his  counter-attack,  but  we  lost 
many  thousands  of  brave  fellows,  and  the  joy  bells  which 
had  rung  in  London  on  November  20th  became  sad  and 
ironical  music  in  the  hearts  of  our  disappointed  people. 

So  ended  1917,  our  black  year;  and  in  the  spring  of 
191 8,  after  all  the  losses  of  that  year,  our  armies  on  the 
western  front  were  threatened  by  the  greatest  menace 
that  had  ever  drawn  near  to  them,  and  the  British  Empire 
was  in  jeopardy. 

VIII 

In  the  autumn  of  1917  the  Italian  disaster  of  Caporetto 
had  happened,  and  Sir  Herbert  Plumer,  with  his  chief  of 
staff.  Sir  John  Harington,  and  many  staff-officers  of  the 
Second  Army,  had,  as  I  have  told,  been  sent  to  Italy  with 
some  of  our  best  divisions,  so  weakening  Sir  Douglas 
Haig's  command.  At  that  very  time,  also,  after  the 
bloody  losses  in  Flanders,  the  French  government  and 
General  Headquarters  brought  severe  pressure  upon  the 
British  War  Council  to  take  over  a  greater  length  of  line 
in  France,  in  order  to  release  some  of  the  older  classes  of 
the  French  army  who  had  been  under  arms  since  1914. 
We  yielded  to  that  pressure  and  Sir  Douglas  Haig  ex- 
tended his  lines  north  and  south  of  St.-Quentin,  where  the 
Fifth  Army,  under  General  Gough,  was  intrusted  with 
the  defense. 

I  went  over  all  that  new  ground  of  ours,  out  from 
Noyon  to  Chaulny  and  Barisis  and  the  floods  of  the  Oise 
by  La  Fere;  out  from  Ham  to  Holmon  Forest  and  Fran- 
cilly  and  the  Epine  de  Dulloii,  and  the  Fort  de  Liez  by 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  493 

St.-Qucntin;  and  from  Peronne  to  Hargicourt  and  Jean- 
court  and  La  Verguier.  It  was  a  pleasant  country,  with 
living  trees  and  green  fields  not  annihilated  by  shell-fire, 
though  with  the  naked  eye  I  could  see  the  scarred  walls  of 
St.-Quentin  cathedral,  and  the  villages  near  the  front- 
Hnes  had  been  damaged  in  the  usual  way.  It  was  dead 
quiet  there  for  miles,  except  for  short  bursts  of  harassing 
fire  now  and  then,  and  odd  shells  here  and  there,  and 
bursts  of  black  shrapnel  in  the  blue  sky  of  mild  days, 

"Paradise,  after  Flanders!"  said  our  men,  but  I  knew 
that  there  was  a  great  movement  of  troops  westward 
from  Russia,  and  wondered  how  long  this  paradise  would 
last. 

I  looked  about  for  trench  systems,  support  lines,  and 
did  not  see  them,  and  wondered  what  our  defense  would 
be  if  the  enemy  attacked  here  in  great  strength.  Our 
army  seemed  wonderfully  thinned  oat.  There  were  few 
men  to  be  seen  in  our  outpost  line  or  in  reserve.  It  was 
all  strangely  quiet.     Alarmingly  quiet. 

Yet,  pleasant  for  the  time  being.  I  had  a  brother 
commanding  a  battery  along  the  railway  line  south  of 
St.-Quentin.  I  went  to  see  him,  and  we  had  a  picnic  meal 
on  a  little  hill  staring  straight  toward  St.-Quentin  cathe- 
dral. One  of  his  junior  officers  set  the  gramophone  going. 
The  colonel  of  the  artillery  brigade  came  jogging  up  on 
his  horse  and  called  out,  **Fine  morning,  and  a  pretty 
spot!"  The  infantry  divisions  were  cheerful.  "Like  a 
rest-cure!"  they  said.  They  had  sports  almost  within 
sight  of  the  German  fines.  I  saw  a  boxing-match  in  an 
Irish  battafion,  and  while  two  fellows  hammered  each 
other  I  glanced  away  from  them  to  winding,  wavy  lines 
of  chalk  on  the  opposite  hillsides,  and  wondered  what 
was  happening  behind  them  in  that  quietude. 

"What  do  you  think  about  this  German  offensive?"  1 
asked  the  general  of  a  London  division  (General  Gorrlnge 
of  the  47th)  standing  on  a  wagon  and  watching  a  tug-of- 
war.  From  that  place  also  we  could  see  the  German 
positions. 


494  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

"G.  H.  Q.  has  got  the  wind-up,"  he  said.  *'It  is  all 
bluff." 

General  Hall,  temporarily  commanding  the  Irish  Divi- 
sion, was  of  the  same  opinion,  and  took  some  pains  to 
explain  the  folly  of  thinking  the  Germans  would  attack. 
Yet  day  after  day,  week  after  week,  the  Intelligence  re- 
ports were  full  of  evidence  of  immense  movements  of 
troops  westward,  of  intensive  training  of  German  divisions 
in  back  areas,  of  new  hospitals,  ammunition-dumps,  air- 
planes, battery  positions.  There  was  overwhelming  evi- 
dence as  to  the  enemy's  intentions.  InteUigence  officers 
took  me  on  one  side  and  said:  "England  ought  to  know. 
The  people  ought  to  be  prepared.  All  this  is  very  serious. 
We  shall  be  *up  against  it.'"  G.  H.  Q.  was  convinced. 
On  February  23d  the  war  correspondents  published  articles 
summarizing  the  evidence,  pointing  out  the  gravity  of  the 
menace,  and  they  were  passed  by  the  censorship.  But 
England  was  not  scared.  Dances  were  in  full  swing  in 
London.  Little  ladies  laughed  as  usual,  hght-hearted. 
Flanders  had  made  no  difference  to  national  optimism, 
though  the  hospitals  were  crowded  with  blind  and  maimed 
and  shell-shocked. 

**I  am  skeptical  of  the  German  offensive  "  said  Mr. 
Bonar  Law. 

Nobody  believed  the  war  correspondents.  Nobody 
ever  did  believe  us,  though  some  of  us  wrote  the  truth 
from  first  to  last  as  far  as  the  facts  of  war  go  apart  from 
deeper  psychology,  and  a  naked  realism  of  horrors  and 
losses,  and  criticism  of  facts,  which  did  not  come  within 
our  liberty  of  the  pen. 

They  were  strange  months  for  me.  I  felt  that  I  was 
in  possession,  as  indeed  I  was,  of  a  terrible  secret  which 
might  lead  to  the  ending  of  the  world — our  world,  as  we 
knew  it — with  our  liberties  and  power.  For  weeks  I  had 
been  pledged  to  say  no  word  about  it,  to  write  not  a  word 
about  it,  and  it  was  like  being  haunted  by  a  specter  all 
day  long.  One  laughed,  but  the  specter  echoed  one's 
laughter  and  said,  "Wait!"    The  mild  sunshine  of  those 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  495 

spring  days  was  pleasant  to  one's  spirit  in  the  woods 
above  La  Fere,  and  in  fields  where  machine-guns  chat- 
tered a  little,  while  overhead  our  airplanes  dodged  Ger- 
man "Archies."  But  the  specter  chilled  one's  blood  at 
the  reminder  of  vast  masses  of  field-gray  men  drawing 
nearer  to  our  lines  in  overwhelming  numbers.  I  motored 
to  many  parts  of  the  front,  and  my  companion  sometimes 
was  a  little  Frenchman  who  had  lost  a  leg  in  the  war — • 
D'Artagnan  with  a  wooden  peg,  most  valiant,  most  gay. 
Along  the  way  he  recited  the  poems  of  Ronsard.  At  the 
journey's  end  one  day  he  sang  old  French  chansons,  in 
an  English  mess,  within  gunshot  of  the  German  lines.  He 
climbed  up  a  tree  and  gazed  at  the  German  positions,  and 
made  sketches  while  he  hummed  little  tunes  and  said 
between  them,  '*Ah,  les  sacres  Bodies! .  .  .  If  only  I  could 
fight  again!" 

I  remember  a  pleasant  dinner  in  the  old  town  of  Noyon, 
in  a  little  restaurant  where  two  pretty  girls  waited.  They 
had  come  from  Paris  with  their  parents  to  start  this  busi- 
ness, now  that  Noyon  was  safe.  (Safe,  O  Lord!)  And 
everything  was  very  dainty  and  clean.  At  dinner  that 
night  there  was  a  hostile  air  raid  overhead.  Bombs 
crashed.  But  the  girls  were  brave.  One  of  them  volun- 
teered to  go  with  an  officer  across  the  square  to  show  him 
the  way  to  the  A.  P.  M.,  from  where  he  had  to  get  a  pass 
to  stay  for  dinner.  Shrapnel  bullets  were  whipping  the 
flagstones  of  the  Grande  Place,  from  anti-aircraft  guns. 
The  officer  wore  his  steel  helmet.  The  girl  was  going  out 
without  any  hat  above  her  braided  hair.  We  did  not 
let  her  go,  and  the  officer  had  another  guide.  One  night 
I  brought  my  brother  to  the  place  from  his  battery  near 
St.-Quentin.     We  dined  well,  slept  well. 

"Noyon  is  a  good  spot,"  he  said.  "I  shall  come  here 
again  when  you  give  me  a  lift." 

A  few  days  later  my  brother  was  firing  at  masses  of 
Germans  with  open  sights,  and  the  British  army  was  in 
a  full-tide  retreat,  and  the  junior  officer  who  had  played 
his  gramophone  was  dead,  with  other  officers  and  men  of 


496  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

that  battery.  When  I  next  passed  through  Noyon  shells 
were  faUing  into  it,  and  later  I  saw  it  in  ruins,  with  the 
glory  of  the  Romanesque  cathedral  sadly  scarred.  I  have 
ofttimes  wondered  what  happened  to  the  little  family  in 
the  old  hotel. 

So  March  21st  came,  as  we  knew  it  would  come,  even 
to  the  very  date,  and  LudendorfF  played  his  trump  cards 
and  the  great  game. 

Before  that  date  I  had  an  interview  with  General  Gough, 
commanding  the  Fifth  Army.  He  pulled  out  his  maps, 
showed  his  method  of  forward  redoubts  beyond  the  main 
battle  zone,  and  in  a  quiet,  amiable  way  spoke  some 
words  which  froze  my  blood. 

"We  may  have  to  give  ground,"  he  said,  "if  the  enemy 
attacks  in  strength.  We  may  have  to  fall  back  to  our 
main  battle  zone.  That  will  not  matter  very  much.  It 
is  possible  that  we  may  have  to  go  farther  back.  Our 
real  line  of  defense  is  the  Somme.  It  will  be  nothing  like 
a  tragedy  if  we  hold  that.  If  we  lose  the  crossings  of  the 
Somme  it  will,  of  course,  be  serious.  But  not  a  tragedy 
even  then.  It  will  only  be  tragic  if  we  lose  Amiens,  and 
we  must  not  do  that." 

"The  crossings  of  the  Somme.  .  .  .  Amiens!" 

Such  a  thought  had  never  entered  my  imagination. 
General  Gough  had  suggested  terrible  possibilities. 

All  but  the  worst  happened.  In  my  despatches,  re- 
printed in  book  form  with  explanatory  prefaces,  I  have 
told  in  full  detail  the  meaning  and  measure  of  the  British 
retreat,  when  forty-eight  of  our  divisions  were  attacked 
by  one  hundred  and  fourteen  German  divisions  and  fell 
back  fighting  stubborn  rear-guard  actions  which  at  last 
brought  the  enemy  to  a  dead  halt  outside  Amiens  and 
along  the  River  Ancre  northward  from  Albert,  where  after- 
ward in  a  northern  attack  the  enemy  under  Prince  Rup- 
precht  of  Bavaria  broke  through  the  Portuguese  between 
Givenchy  and  Fcstubert,  where  our  wings  held,  drove  up 
to  Bailleul,  which  was  burned  to  the  ground,  and  caused 
us  to  abandon  all  the  ridges  of  Flanders  which  had  been 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  497 

gained  at  such  great  cost,  and  fall  back  to  the  edge  of 
Ypres.  In  this  book  I  need  not  narrate  all  this  history 
again. 

They  were  evil  days  for  us.  The  German  offensive 
was  conducted  with  masterly  skill,  according  to  the  new 
method  of  "infiltration"  which  had  been  tried  against 
Italy  with  great  success  in  the  autumn  of  '17  at  Capo- 
retto. 

It  consisted  in  a  penetration  of  our  lines  by  wedges  of 
machine-gunners  constantly  reinforced  and  working  in- 
ward so  that  our  men,  attacked  frontally  after  terrific 
bombardment,  found  themselves  under  flanking  fire  on 
their  right  and  left  and  in  danger  of  being  cut  off.  Taking 
advantage  of  a  dense  fog,  for  which  they  had  waited 
according  to  meteorological  forecast,  the  Germans  had 
easily  made  their  way  between  our  forward  redoubts  on 
the  Fifth  Army  front,  where  our  garrisons  held  out  for  a 
long  time,  completely  surrounded,  and  penetrated  our 
inner  battle  zone.  Through  the  gaps  they  made  they 
came  in  masses  at  a  great  pace  with  immense  machine- 
gun  strength  and  hght  artillery.  On  the  Third  Army 
front  where  penetrations  were  made,  notably  near  Bulle- 
court  between  the  6th  and  51st  Divisions,  the  whole  of 
our  army  machine  was  upset  for  a  time  like  a  watch  with 
a  broken  mainspring  and  loose  wheels.  Staffs  lost  touch 
with  fighting  units.  Communications  were  broken  down. 
Orders  were  given  but  not  received.  After  enormous 
losses  of  men  and  guns,  our  heavy  artillery  was  choking 
the  roads  of  escape,  while  our  rear-guards  fought  for  time 
rather  than  for  ground.  The  crossings  of  the  Somme 
were  lost  too  easily.  In  the  confusion  and  tumult  of 
those  days  some  of  our  men,  being  human,  were  demoral- 
ized and  panic-stricken,  and  gave  ground  which  might 
have  been  longer  held.  But  on  the  whole,  and  in  the  mass, 
there  was  no  panic,  and  a  most  grim  valor  of  men  who 
fought  for  days  and  nights  without  sleep;  fought  when 
they  were  almost  surrounded  or  quite  surrounded,  and 
until  few  of  them  remained  to  hold  any  kind  of  line.     Forr 


498  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOUJ) 

tunately  the  Germans  were  unable  to  drag  their  heavy 
guns  over  the  desert  they  had  made  a  year  before  in  their 
own  retreat,  and  at  the  end  of  a  week  their  pace  slackened 
and  they  halted,  in  exhaustion. 

I  went  into  the  swirl  of  our  retreat  day  after  day  up 
by  Guiscard  and  Hum;  then,  as  the  line  moved  back,  by 
Peronne  and  Bapaume,  and  at  last  on  a  dreadful  day  by 
the  windmill  at  Pozieres,  our  old  heroic  fighting-ground, 
where  once  again  after  many  battles  the  enemy  was 
in  Courcelette  and  High  Wood  and  Delville  Wood,  and, 
as  I  saw  by  going  to  the  right  through  Albert,  driving 
hard  up  to  Mametz  and  Montauban.  That  meant  the 
loss  of  all  the  old  Somme  battlefields,  and  that  struck  a 
chill  in  one's  heart.  But  what  I  marveled  at  always  was 
the  absence  of  panic,  the  fatalistic  acceptance  of  the  turn 
of  fortune's  wheel  by  many  ofl&cers  and  men,  and  the 
refusal  of  corps  and  divisional  staffs  to  give  way  to  de- 
spair in  those  days  of  tragedy  and  crisis. 

The  northern  attack  was  in  many  W2iys  worse  to  bear 
and  worse  to  see.  The  menace  to  the  coast  was  frightful 
when  the  enemy  strack  up  to  Bailleul  and  captured  Kem- 
mel  Hill  from  a  French  regiment  which  had  come  up  to 
relieve  some  of  our  exhausted  and  unsupported  men. 
All  through  this  country  between  Estaires  and  Merville, 
to  Steenwerck,  Metern,  and  Bailleul,  thousands  of  civilians 
had  been  living  on  the  edge  of  the  battlefields,  believing 
themselves  safe  behind  our  lines.  Now  the  line  had 
slipped  and  they  were  caught  by  German  shell-fire  and 
German  guns,  and  after  nearly  four  years  of  war  had  to 
abandon  their  homes  like  the  first  fugitives.  I  saw  old 
women  coming  down  lanes  where  5.9's  were  bursting  and 
where  our  gunners  were  getting  into  action.  I  saw  young 
mothers  packing  their  babies  and  their  bundles  into  per- 
ambulators while  shells  came  hurtling  over  the  thatched 
roofs  of  their  cottages.  I  stood  on  the  Mont  des  Chats 
looking  down  upon  a  wide  sweep  of  battle,  and  saw  many 
little  farmsteads  on  fire  and  Bailleul  one  torch  of  flame 
and  smoke. 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  499 

There  was  an  old  monastery  on  the  Mont  des  Chats 
which  had  been  in  the  midst  of  a  cavalry  battle  in  October 
of  1914,  when  Prince  Max  of  Hesse,  the  Kaiser's  cousin, 
was  mortally  wounded  by  a  shot  from  one  of  our  troopers. 
He  was  carried  into  the  cell  of  the  old  prior,  who  watched 
over  him  in  his  dying  hours  when  he  spoke  of  his  family 
and  friends.  Then  his  body  was  borne  down  the  hill  at 
night  and  buried  secretly  by  a  parish  priest;  and  when 
the  Kaiser  wrote  to  the  Pope,  desiring  to  know  the  where- 
abouts of  his  cousin's  grave,  the  priest  to  whom  his  mes- 
sage was  conveyed  said,  "Tell  the  Kaiser  he  shall  know 
when  the  German  armies  have  departed  from  Belgium 
and  when  reparation  has  been  made  for  all  their  evil 
deeds."  It  was  the  prior  who  told  me  that  story  and 
who  described  to  me  how  the  British  cavalry  had  forged 
their  way  up  the  hill.  He  showed  me  the  scars  of  bullets 
on  the  walls  and  the  windows  from  which  the  monks 
looked  out  upon  the  battle. 

"All  that  is  a  wonderful  memory,"  said  the  prior. 
"Thanks  to  the  English,  we  are  safe  and  beyond  the 
range  of  German  shells." 

I  thought  of  his  words  that  day  I  climbed  the  hill  to 
see  the  sweep  of  battle  beyond.  The  monastery  was  no 
longer  beyond  the  range  of  German  shells.  An  eight- 
inch  shell  had  just  smashed  into  the  prior's  parlor.  Others 
had  opened  gaps  in  the  high  roofs  and  walls.  The  monks 
had  fled  by  order  of  the  prior,  who  stayed  behind,  like  the 
captain  of  a  sinking  ship.  His  corridors  resounded  to  the 
tramp  of  army  boots.  The  Ulster  gunners  had  made 
their  headquarters  in  the  refectory,  but  did  not  stay  there 
long.     A  few  days  later  the  monastery  was  a  ruin. 

From  many  little  villages  caught  by  the  oncoming  tide 
of  war  our  soldiers  helped  the  people  to  escape  in  lorries 
or  on  gun-wagons.  They  did  not  weep,  nor  say  much, 
but  were  wonderfully  brave.  I  remember  a  Httle  family 
in  Robecq  whom  I  packed  into  my  car  when  shells  began 
to  fall  among  the  houses.  A  pretty  girl,  with  a  little 
invalid  brother  in  her  arms,  and  a  mother  by  her  side. 


500  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

pointed  the  way  to  a  cottage  in  a  wood  some  miles  away. 
She  was  gay  and  smihng  when  she  said,  "Au  revoir  et 
merci!"  A  few  days  later  the  cottage  and  the  wood  were 
behind  the  German  lines. 

The  northern  defense,  by  the  55th  Lancashires,  51st 
Highlanders  (who  had  been  all  through  the  Somme  re- 
treat), the  25th  Division  of  Cheshires,  Wiltshires  and 
Lancashire  Fusiliers,  and  the  9th  Scottish  Division,  and 
others,  who  fought  "with  their  backs  to  the  wall,"  as  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  demanded  of  them,  without  reliefs,  until 
they  were  worn  thin,  was  heroic  and  tragic  in  its  ordeal, 
until  Foch  sent  up  his  cavalry  (I  saw  them  riding  in  clouds 
of  dust  and  heard  the  panting  of  their  horses),  followed  by 
divisions  of  blue  men  in  hundreds  of  blue  lorries  tearing 
up  the  roads,  and  forming  a  strong  blue  line  behind  our 
thin  brown  line.  Prince  Rupprecht  of  Bavaria  had 
twenty-six  fresh  divisions  in  reserve,  but  had  to  hold 
them  until  other  plans  were  developed — the  Crown 
Prince's  plan  against  the  French,  and  the  attack  on 
Arras. 

The  defense  of  Arras  by  the  3d  and  56th  Divisions — 
the  Iron  Division  and  the  London  Division  on  the  left, 
and  by  the  15th  Division  and  Guards  on  the  right,  saved 
the  center  of  our  line  and  all  our  line.  We  had  a  breath- 
ing-space while  heavy  blows  fell  against  the  French  and 
against  three  British  divisions  who  had  been  sent  to  hold 
"a  quiet  sector"  on  their  right.  The  Germans  drove 
across  the  Chemin  des  Dames,  struck  right  and  left,  ter- 
rific blows,  beat  the  French  back,  reached  the  Marne 
again,  and  threatened  Paris. 

Foch  waited  to  strike.  The  genius  of  Foch  was  that  he 
waited  until  the  last  minute  of  safety,  taking  immense 
risks  in  order  to  be  certain  of  his  counter-stroke.  For  a 
time  he  had  to  dissipate  his  reserves,  but  he  gathered  them 
together  again.  As  quick  as  the  blue  men  had  come  up 
behind  our  lines  they  v/ere  withdrawn  again.  Three  of 
our  divisions  went  with  them,  the  51st  Highlanders  and 
15th  Scottish,  and  the  48th  English.     The  flower  of  the 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  501 

French  army,  the  veterans  of  many  battles,  was  massed 
behind  the  Marne,  and  at  Chateau  Thierry  the  American 
marines  and  infantry  were  given  their  first  big  job  to  do. 
What  happened  all  the  world  knows.  The  Crown  Prince's 
army  was  attacked  on  both  flanks  and  in  the  center,  and 
was  sent  reeling  back  to  escape  complete  annihilation. 


IX 

LudendorfF's  great  ofFensive  had  failed  and  had  turned 
to  ruin.  Some  of  the  twenty-six  fresh  divisions  under 
Rupprecht  of  Bavaria  were  put  into  the  melting-pot  to 
save  the  Crown  Prince.  The  British  army,  with  its  gaps 
filled  up  by  300,000  new  drafts  from  England,  the  young 
brothers  of  the  elder  brothers  who  had  gone  before,  was 
ready  to  strike  again,  and  on  August  8th  the  Canadians 
and  Australians  north  and  south  of  the  Somme,  led  by 
man}^  tanks,  broke  the  enemy's  line  beyond  Amiens  and 
slowly  but  surely  rolled  it  back  with  enormous  losses. 

For  the  first  time  in  the  war  the  cavalry  had  their 
chance  of  pursuit,  and  made  full  use  of  it,  rounding  up 
great  batches  of  prisoners,  capturing  batteries  of  heavy 
and  light  guns,  and  fighting  in  many  actions. 

"August  8th,"  writes  Ludendorfi^,  "was  the  black  day 
of  the  German  army  in  the  history  of  this  war." 

He  describes  from  the  German  point  of  view  what  I 
and  others  have  described  from  the  British  point  of  view, 
and  the  general  narrative  is  the  same — a  succession  of 
hammer-blows  by  the  British  armies,  which  broke  not 
only  the  German  war-machine,  but  the  German  spirit. 
It  was  a  marvelous  feat  when  the  19th  Division  and  the 
Welsh  waded  at  dusk  across  the  foul  waters  of  the  River 
Ancre,  under  the  heights  of  Thiepval,  assembled  under 
the  guns  of  the  enemy  up  there,  and  then,  wet  to  their 
skins,  and  in  small  numbers  compared  with  the  strength 
of  the  enemy,  stormed  the  huge  ridges  from  both  sides,  and 
hurled  the  enemy  back  from  what  he  thought  was  an 
impregnable   position,   and   followed   him   day  by   day, 


502  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

taking  thousands   of  prisoners   and   smashing  his   rear- 
guard defenses  one  by  one. 

The  most  decisive  battle  of  the  British  front  in  the 
/*come-back,"  after  our  days  of  retreat,  was  when  with  the 
gallant  help  of  American  troops  of  the  27th  New  York 
Division  our  men  of  the  English  Midlands,  the  46th 
Division,  and  others,  broke  the  main  Hindenburg  line 
along  the  St.-Quentin  Canal.     That  canal  was  sixty  feet 

f^ y       wide,  with  steep  cliffs  rising  sheer  to  a  wonderful  system 

^  ^V^  of  German  machine-gun  redoubts  and  tunneled  defenses, 
between    the    villages    of   Bellicourt    and    Bellinglis.     It 

p.  seemed  to  me  an  impossible  place  to  assault  and  capture. 

J.        If  the  enemy  could  not  hold  that  line  they  could  hold 

■^  nothing.  In  a  dense  fog  on  Sunday  morning,  September 
30th,  our  men,  with  the  Americans  and  Austrahans  in 
support,  went  down  to  the  canal-bank,  waded  across 
where  the  water  was  shallow,  swam  across  in  life-belts 
where  it  was  deep,  or  got  across  somehow  and  anyhow, 
under  blasts  of  machine-gun  fire,  by  rafts  and  plank 
bridges.  A  few  hours  after  the  beginning  of  the  battle 
they  were  far  out  beyond  the  German  side  of  the  canal, 
with  masses  of  prisoners  in  their  hands.  The  Americans 
on  the  left  of  the  attack,  where  the  canal  goes  below 
ground,  showed  superb  and  reckless  gallantry  (they  for- 
got, however,  to  *'mop  up"  behind  them,  so  that  the 
enemy  came  out  of  his  tunnels  and  the  Australians  had  to 
cut  their  way  through),  and  that  evening  I  met  their 
escorts  with  droves  of  captured  Germans.  They  had 
helped  to  break  the  last  defensive  system  of  the  enemy 
opposite  the  British  front,  and  after  that  our  troops 
fought  through  open  country  on  the  way  to  victory. 

I  saw  many  of  the  scenes  which  led  up  to  Mons  and 
Le  Cateau  and  afterward  to  the  Rhine.  Something  of 
the  horror  of  war  passed  when  the  enemy  drew  back 
slowly  in  retreat  from  the  lands  he  had  invaded,  and  we 
Hberated  great  cities  like  Lille  and  Roubaix  and  Tour- 
coing,  and  scores  of  towns  and  villages  where  the  people 
had  been  waiting  for  us  so  long,  and  now  wept  with  joy 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  5d     7^ 

to  see  us.  The  entry  into  Lille  was  unforgetabie,  wh/ 
old  men  and  women  and  girls  and  boys  and  little  children 
crowded  round  us  and  kissed  our  hands.  So  it  was  in 
other  places.  Yet  not  all  the  horror  had  passed.  In 
Courtrai,  in  St.-Amand  by  Valenciennes,  in  Bohain,  and 
other  villages,  the  enemy's  shell-fire  and  poison-gas  killed 
and  injured  many  of  the  people  who  had  been  under  the 
German  3'oke  so  long  and  now  thought  they  were  safe. 
Llospitals  were  filled  with  women  gasping  for  breath,  with 
gas-fumes  in  their  lungs,  and  with  dying  children.  In 
Valenciennes  the  cellars  were  flooded  when  I  walked  there 
on  its  day  of  capture,  so  that  when  shells  began  to  fall 
the  people  could  not  go  down  to  shelter.  Some  of  them 
did  not  try  to  go  down.  At  an  open  window  sat  an  old 
veteran  of  1870  with  his  medal  on  his  breast,  and  with 
his  daughter  and  granddaughter  on  each  side  of  his  chair. 
He  called  out,  "Merci!  Merci!"  when  English  soldiers 
passed,  and  when  I  stopped  a  moment  clasped  my  hands 
through  the  window  and  could  not  speak  for  the  tears 
which  fell  down  his  white  and  withered  cheeks.  A  few 
dead  Germans  lay  about  the  streets,  and  in  Maubeuge 
on  the  day  before  the  armistice  I  saw  the  last  dead  Ger- 
man of  the  war  in  that  part  of  the  line.  He  lay  stretched 
outside  the  railway  station  into  which  many  shells  had 
crashed.  It  w^as  as  though  he  had  walked  from  his  own 
comrades  toward  our  line  before  a  bullet  caught  him. 

Ludendorff  writes  of  the  broken  morale  of  the  German 
troops,  and  of  how  his  men  surrendered  to  single  troopers 
of  ours,  while  whole  detachments  gave  themselves  up  to 
tanks.  "Retiring  troops,"  he  wrote,  "greeted  one  par- 
ticular division  (the  cavalry)  that  was  going  up  fresh  and 
gallantly  to  the  attack,  with  shouts  of  'Blacklegs!'  and 
*War-prolongers!'"  That  is  true.  When  the  Germans 
left  Bohain  they  shouted  out  to  the  French  girls:  "The 
English  are  coming.  Bravo!  The  war  will  soon  be  over!'* 
On  a  day  in  September,  when  British  troops  broke  the 
Drocourt-Queant  Hne,  I  saw  the  Second  German  Guards 
coming  along  in  batches,  like  companies,  and  after  they 


504  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

had  been  put  m  barbed-wire  inclosures  they  laughed  and 
clapped  at  the  sight  of  other  crowds  of  comrades  coming 
down  as  prisoners.  I  thought  then,  "Something  has 
broken  in  the  German  spirit."  For  the  first  time  the  end 
seemed  very  near. 

Yet  the  German  rear-guards  fought  stubbornly  in  many 
places,  especially  in  the  last  battles  round  Cambrai,  where, 
on  the  north,  the  Canadian  corps  had  to  fight  desperately, 
and  suflPered  heavy  and  bitter  losses  under  machine-gun 
fire,  while  on  the  south  our  naval  division  and  others  were 
badly  cut  up. 

General  Currie,  whom  I  saw  during  those  days,  was 
anxious  and  disheartened.  He  was  losing  more  men  in 
machine-gun  actions  round  Cambrai  than  in  bigger  bat- 
tles. I  watched  those  actions  from  Bourlon  Wood,  saw 
the  last  German  railway  train  steam  out  of  the  town, 
and  went  into  the  city  early  on  the  morning  of  its  capture, 
when  there  was  a  roaring  fire  in  the  heart  of  it  and  the 
Canadians  were  routing  out  the  last  Germans  from  their 
hiding-places. 

The  British  army  could  not  have  gone  on  much  farther 
after  November  nth,  when  the  armistice  brought  us  to 
a  halt.  For  three  months  our  troops  had  fought  inces- 
santly, storming  many  villages  strongly  garrisoned  with 
machine-gunners,  crossing  many  canals  under  heavy  fire, 
and  losing  many  comrades  all  along  the  way.  The  pace 
could  not  have  been  kept  up.  There  is  a  limit  even  to 
the  valor  of  British  troops,  and  for  a  time  we  had  reached 
that  limit.  There  were  not  many  divisions  who  could 
have  staggered  on  to  new  attacks  without  rest  and  relief. 
But  they  had  broken  the  German  armies  against  them  by 
a  succession  of  hammer-strokes  astounding  in  their  rapid- 
ity and  in  their  continuity,  which  I  need  not  here  describe 
in  detail,  because  in  my  despatches,  now  in  book  form,  I 
have  narrated  that  history  as  I  was  a  witness  of  it  day  by 
day. 

Elsewhere  the  French  and  Americans  had  done  their 
part  with  steady,  driving  pressure.     The  illimitable  re- 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  505' 

serves  ^f_AjnericanSa_jind  their  fighting  qualitw  which f 
triumphed  over  a  faulty  organization  of  transport  andj 
suppUes,  left  the  German  High  Command  without  hope/ 
even  for  a  final  gamble. 

Before  them  the  German  troops  were  in  revolt,  at  last, 
against  the  bloody,  futile  sacrifice  of  their  manhood  and 
people.  A  blinding  light  had  come  to  them,  revealing  the 
criminalit}^  of  their  war  lords  in  this  "Great  Swindle" 
against  their  race.  It  was  defeat  and  agony  which  en-\ 
lightened  them,  as  most  people — -even  ourselves;^are_en-l 
lightened  onl}"  by  suffering  and  disillusionmentj^jld  neveF 
by  successes. 


After  the  armistice  I  went  with  our  troops  to  the 
Rhine,  and  entered  Cologne  with  them.  That  was  the 
most  fantastic  adventure  of  all  in  four  and  a  half  years 
of  strange  and  terrible  adventures.  To  me  there  was  no 
wild  exultation  in  the  thought  of  being  in  Cologne  with 
our  conquering  army.  The  thought  of  all  the  losses  on 
the  waj^,  and  of  all  the  futility  of  this  strife,  smote  at 
one's  heart.  What  fools  the  Germans  had  been,  what 
tragic  fools!  What  a  mad  villainy  there  had  been  among 
rival  dynasties  and  powers  and  politicians  and  peoples  to 
lead  to  this  massacre!  What  had  any  one  gained  out  of 
it  all?  Nothing  except  ruin.  Nothing  except  great  death 
and  poverty  and  remorse  and  revolt. 

The  German  people  received  us  humbly.  They  were 
eager  to  show  us  courtesy  and  submission.  It  was  a 
chance  for  our  young  Junkers,  for  the  Prussian  in  the 
hearts  of  young  pups  cf  ours,  who  could  play  the  petty 
tyrant,  shout  at  German  waiters,  refuse  to  pay  their  bills, 
bully  shopkeepers,  insult  unoffending  citizens.  A  few 
young  staff-officers  behaved  like  that,  disgustingly.  The 
officers  of  fighting  battalions  and  the  men  were  very 
different.  It  was  a  strange  study  in  psychology  to  watch 
them.  Here  they  were  among  the  "Huns."  The  men 
they  passed  in  the  streets  and  sat  with  in  the  restaurants 


5o6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

had  been  in  German  uniforms  a  few  weeks  before,  or  a 
few  days.  They  were  "the  enemy,"  the  men  they  had 
tried  to  kill,  the  men  who  had  tried  to  kill  them.  They 
had  actually  fought  against  them  in  the  same  places.  At 
the  Domhof  Hotel  I  overheard  a  conversation  between  a 
young  waiter  and  three  of  our  cavalry  officers.  They  had 
been  in  the  same  fight  in  the  village  of  Noyelles,  near 
Cambrai,  a  tiny  place  of  ruin,  where  they  had  crouched 
under  machine-gun  fire.  The  waiter  drew  a  diagram  on 
the  table-cloth.  "I  was  just  there."  The  three  cavalry 
officers  laughed.  ''Extraordinary!  We  were  a  few  yards 
away."  They  chatted  with  the  waiter  as  though  he  were 
an  old  acquaintance  who  had  played  against  them  in  a 
famous  football-match.  They  did  not  try  to  kill  him 
with  a  table-knife.     He  did  not  put  poison  in  the  soup. 

That  young  waiter  had  served  in  a  hotel  in  Manchester, 
where  he  had  served  a  friend  of  mine,  to  whom  he  now 
expressed  his  opinion  on  the  folly  of  the  war,  and  the 
criminality  of  his  war  lords,  and  things  in  general.  Among 
these  last  he  uttered  an  epigram  which  I  remember  for 
its  brutal  simplicity.  It  was  when  a  stafi^-officer  of  ours, 
rather  the  worse  for  wine,  had  been  making  a  scene  with 
the  head  waiter,  bullying  him  in  a  strident  voice. 

"Some  English  gentlemen  are  swine,"  said  the  young 
waiter.     "But  all  German  gentlemen  are  swine." 

Some  of  our  officers  and  men  billeted  in  houses  outside 
Cologne  or  across  the  Rhine  endeavored  to  stand  on  dis- 
tant terms  with  the  "Huns."  But  it  was  impossible  to 
be  discourteous  when  the  old  lady  of  the  house  brought 
them  an  early  cup  of  coffee  before  breakfast,  warmed 
their  boots  before  the  kitchen  fire,  said,  "God  be  praised, 
the  war  is  over."  For  English  soldiers,  anything  Hke 
hostility  was  ridiculous  in  the  presence  of  German  boys 
and  girls  who  swarmed  round  their  horses  and  guns, 
kissed  their  hands,  brought  them  little  pictures  and  gifts. 

"Kids  are  kids,"  said  a  sergeant-major.  "I  don't  want 
to  cut  their  throats!     Queer,  ain't  it.^"* 

Many  of  the  "kids"  looked  half  starved.     Our  men 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  ijo; 

gave  them  bread  and  biscuit  and  bully  beef.  In  Cologne 
the  people  seemed  pleased  to  see  British  soldiers.  There 
was  no  sense  of  humiliation.  No  agony  of  grief  at  this 
foreign  occupation.  Was  it  lack  of  pride,  cringing — or  a 
profound  rehef  that  the  river  of  blood  had  ceased  to  flow 
and  even  a  sense  of  protection  against  the  revolutionary 
mob  which  had  looted  their  houses  before  our  entry? 
Almost  every  family  had  lost  one  son.  Some  of  them 
two,  three,  even  five  sons,  in  that  orgy  of  slaughter.  They 
had  paid  a  dreadful  price  for  pride.  Their  ambition  had 
been  drowned  in  blood. 

In  the  restaurants  orchestras  played  gay  music.  Once 
I  heard  them  playing  old  English  melodies,  and  I  sickened 
a  Httle  at  that.  That  was  going  too  far!  I  looked  round 
the  Cafe  Bauer — a  strange  scene  after  four  and  a  half 
years  Hun-hating.  English  soldiers  were  chatting  with 
Germans,  clinking  beer  mugs  with  them.  The  Germans 
lifted  their  hats  to  English  "Tommies";  our  men,  Cana- 
dian and  English,  said  "Cheerio!"  to  German  soldiers  in 
uniforms  without  shoulder-straps  or  buttons.  English 
people  still  talking  of  Huns,  demanding  vengeance,  the 
maintenance  of  the  blockade,  would  have  become  hys- 
terical if  they  had  come  suddenly  to  this  German  cafe 
before  the  signing  of  peace. 

Long  before  peace  was  signed  at  Versailles  it  had  been 
made  on  the  Rhine.  Stronger  than  the  hate  of  war  was 
human  nature.  Face  to  face,  British  soldiers  found  that 
every  German  had  two  eyes,  a  nose,  and  a  mouth,  in  spite 
of  being  a  "Hun."  As  ecclesiastics  would  say  when  not 
roused  to  patriotic  fury,  they  had  been  made  "in  the 
image  of  God."  There  were  pleasant-spoken  women  in 
the  shops  and  in  the  farmhouses.  Blue-eyed  girls  with 
flaxen  pigtails  courtesied  very  prettily  to  English  officers. 
They  were  clean.  Their  houses  were  clean,  more  spotless 
even  than  English  homes.  When  soldiers  turned  on  a 
tap  they  found  water  came  out  of  it.  Wonderful!  The 
sanitary  arrangements  were  good.  Servants  were  hard- 
working and  dutiful.     There  was  something,  after  all,  in 


5o8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

German  Ktiltnr.  At  night  the  children  said  their  prayers 
to  the  Christian  God.  Most  of  them  were  CathoHcs,  and 
very  pious. 

*'They  seem  good  people,"  said  English  soldiers. 

At  night,  in  the  streets  of  Cologne,  were  women  not  so 
good.  Shameless  women,  though  daintily  dressed  and 
comely.  British  soldiers — English,  Scottish,  and  Cana- 
dian— grinned  back  at  their  laughing  eyes,  entered  into 
converse  with  them,  found  they  could  all  speak  English, 
went  down  side-streets  with  them  to  narrow-fronted 
houses.  There  were  squalid  scenes  when  the  A.  P.  M. 
raided  these  houses  and  broke  up  an  entente  cordiale  that 
was  flagrant  and  scandalous. 

Astonishing  climax  to  the  drama  of  war!  No  general 
orders  could  stop  fraternization  before  peace  was  signed. 
Human  nature  asserted  itself  against  all  artificial  restric- 
tions and  false  passion.  Friends  of  mine  who  had  been 
violent  in  their  hatred  of  all  Germans  became  thoughtful, 
and  said:  "Of  course  there  are  exceptions,"  and,  *'The 
innocent  must  not  sufi'er  for  the  guilty,"  and,  *'We  can 
aff'ord  to  be  a  little  generous  now." 

But  the  innocent  were  made  to  suffer  for  the  guilty  and 
we  were  not  generous.  We  maintained  the  blockade,  and 
German  children  starved,  and  German  mothers  weakened, 
and  German  girls  swooned  in  the  tram-cars,  and  German 
babies  died.  Ludendorff  did  not  starve  or  die.  Neither 
did  Hindenburg,  nor  any  German  war  lord,  nor  any  profi- 
teer, Down  the  streets  of  Cologne  came  people  of  the  rich 
middle  classes,  who  gorged  themselves  on  buns  and  cakes 
for  afternoon  tea.  They  were  cakes  of  ersatz  flour  with 
ersatz  cream,  and  not  very  healthy  or  nutritious,  though 
very  expensive.  But  in  the  side-streets,  among  the  work- 
ing-women, there  was,  as  I  found,  the  wolf  of  hunger 
standing  with  open  jaws  by  every  doorway.  It  was  not 
actual  starvation,  but  what  the  Germans  call  unterndh- 
rung  (under-nourishment),  producing  rickety  children,  con- 
sumptive girls,  and  men  out  of  whom  vitality  had  gone. 
They  stinted  and  scraped  on  miserable  substitutes,  and 


THE  FIELDS  OF  ARMAGEDDON  509 

never  had  enough  to  eat.  Yet  they  were  the  people  who 
for  two  years  at  least  had  denounced  the  war,  had  sent  up 
petitions  for  peace,  and  had  written  to  their  men  in  the 
trenches  about  the  Great  Swindle  and  the  Gilded  Ones. 
They  were  powerless,  as  some  of  them  told  me,  because  of 
the  secret  police  and  martial  law.  What  could  they  do 
against  the  government,  with  all  their  men  away  at  the 
front  .f*  They  were  treated  hke  pigs,  like  dirt.  They  could 
only  suffer  and  pray.  They  had  a  Httle  hope  that  in  the 
future,  if  France  and  England  were  not  too  hard,  they 
might  pay  back  for  the  guilt  of  their  war  lords  and  see  a 
new  Germany  arise  out  of  its  ruin,  freed  from  militarism 
and  with  greater  liberties.  So  humble  people  talked  to 
us  when  I  went  among  them  with  a  friend  who  spoke 
good  German,  better  than  my  elementary  knowledge. 
1  beUeved  in  their  sincerity,  which  had  come  through 
suffering,  though  I  believed  that  newspaper  editors,  many 
people  in  the  official  classes,  and  the  old  mihtary  caste 
were  still  implacable  in  hatred  and  unrepentant.  ^ 

The  German  people  deserved  punishment  for  their  share 
in  the  guilt  of  war.  They  had  been  punished  by  frightful! 
losses  of  life,  by  a  multitude  of  cripples,  by  the  ruin  of/ 
their  Empire.  When  they  told  me  of  their  hunger  I  could 
not  forget  the  hungry  wives  and  children  of  France  and 
Belgium,  who  had  been  captives  in  their  own  land  behind 
German  lines,  nor  our  prisoners  who  had  been  starved, 
until  many  of  them  died.  When  I  walked  through  Ger- 
man villages  and  pitied  the  women  who  yearned  for  their 
men,  still  prisoners  in  our  hands,  nearly  a  year  after  the 
armistice,  and  long  after  peace  (a  cruelty  which  shamed 
us,  I  think),  I  remembered  hundreds  of  French  villages 
broken  into  dust  by  German  gun-fire,  burned  by  incen- 
diary shells,  and  that  vast  desert  of  the  battlefields  in 
France  and  Belgium  which  never  in  our  time  will  regain 
its  fife  as  a  place  of  human  habitation.  When  Germans 
said,  "Our  industry  is  ruined,"  "Our  trade  is  killed,"  I 
thought  of  the  factories  in  Lille  and  many  towns  from 
which   all  machinery  had  been  taken  or  in  which   all 


5IO  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

machinery  had  been  broken.  I  thought  of  the  thousand 
crimes  of  their  war,  the  agony  of  miUions  of  people  upon 
whose  hberties  they  had  trampled  and  upon  whose  necks 
they  had  imposed  a  brutal  yoke.  Yet  even  with  all  those 
memories  of  tragic  scenes  which  in  this  book  are  but 
lightly  sketched,  I  hoped  that  the  peace  we  should  impose 
V  would  not  be  one  of  vengeance,  by  which  the  innocent 
would  pay  for  the  sins  of  the  guilty,  the  children  for  their 
fathers'  lust,  the  women  for  their  war  lords,  the  soldiers 
who  hated  war  for  those  who  drove  them  to  the  shambles; 
but  that  this  peace  should  in  justice  and  mercy  lead  the 
working-people  of  Europe  out  of  the  misery  in  which  all 
were  plunged,  and  by  a  policy  no  higher  than  common 
sense,  but  as  high  as  that,  establish  a  new  phase  of  civil- 
ization in  which  military  force  would  be  reduced  to  the 
limits  of  safety  for  European  peoples  eager  to  end  the 
folly  of  war  and  get  back  to  work. 
y  I  hoped  too  much.     There  was  no  such  peace. 


Part  Eight 

FOR    WHAT 
MEN    DIED 


FOR  WHAT  MEN   DIED 


IN  this  book  I  have  written  in  a  blunt  way  some  epi- 
sodes of  the  war  as  I  observed  them,  and  gained  first- 
hand knowledge  of  them  in  their  daily  traffic.     I  have  not 
painted   the   picture   blacker  than   it  was,   nor  selected 
gruesome  morsels  and  joined  them  together  to  make  a 
jig-saw  puzzle  for  ghoulish  delight.     Unhke  Henri  Bar-| 
busse,  who,  in  his  dreadful  book  Le  Feu,  gave  the  unre- ! 
lieved  blackness  of  this  human  drama,  I  have  here  and  i 
in  other  books  shown  the  light  as  well  as  the  shade  in  I 
which  our  men  lived,  the  gaiety  as  well  as  the  fear  they' 
had,  the  exultation  as  well  as  the  agony  of  battle,  the 
spiritual  ardor  of  boys  as  well  as  the  brutality  of  the  task^ 
that  was   theirs.     I   have  tried  to   set   down   as   many 
aspects  of  the  war's  psychology  as  I  could  find  in  my 
remembrance  of  these  years,  without  exaggeration  or  false 
emphasis,  so  that  out  of  their  confusion,  even  out  of  their 
contradiction,  the  real  truth  of  the  adventure  might  be 
seen  as  it  touched  the  souls  of  men. 

Yet  when  one  strives  to  sum  up  the  evidence  and  reach 
definite  conclusions  about  the  motives  which  led  men  of 
the  warring  nations  to  kill  one  another  year  after  year  in 
those  fields  of  slaughter,  the  ideals  for  which  so  many 
millions  of  men  laid  down  their  lives,  and  the  effect  of 
those  years  of  carnage  upon  the  philosophy  of  this  present 
world  of  men,  there  is  no  clear  line  of  thought  or  con- 
viction. 

It  is  difficult  at  least  to  forecast  the  changes  that  will 
be  produced  by  this  experience  in  the  social  structure  of 
civilized  peoples,  and  in  their  relations  jo_one_another,^ 


SH 


NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 


though  itjg  certain,  even  now,  that  out  of  the  passion  of 
the  war  a  new  erajnjthe  world's  history  is  being  born. 
The  ideas  of  vast  masses  of  people  have  been  revolution- 
ized  by  the  thoughts  that  were  stirred  up  in  them  during 
those  years  of  intense  suffering.  No  system  of  govern- 
ment designed  by  men  afraid  of  the  new  ideas  will  have 
power  to  kill  them,  though  they  may  throttle  them  for  a 
time.  For  good  or  ill,  I  know  not  which,  the  ideas 
germinated  in  trenches  and  dugouts,  in  towns  under  shell- 
fire  or  bomb-fire,  in  hearts  stricken  by  personal  tragedy 
or  world-agony,  will  prevail  over  the  old  order  which 
dominated  the  nations  of  Europe,  and  the  old  philosophy 
of  political  and  social  governance  will  be  challenged  and 
perhaps  overthrown.  If  the  new  ideas  are  thwarted  by 
reactionary  rulers  endeavoring  to  jerk  the  world  back  to 
its  old-fashioned  discipline  under  their  authority,  there 
will  be  anarchy  reaching  to  the  heights  of  terror  in  more 
countries  than  those  where  anarchy  now  prevails.  If  by 
fear  or  by  wisdom  the  new  ideas  are  allowed  to  gain  their 
ground  gradually,  a  revolution  will  be  accomplished  with- 
out anarchy.  But  in  any  case,  for  good  ox  ill,  ^  reynln- 
tjpn  willhappen.  It  has  happened  in  the  sense  _that 
already    there  is  no  resemblance  between  this  Europe 


a  fter-t  he-war 


^urope-before-the-war,    in— the 


mental  attitude  of  thejTTasses_toward^  the  problems  of  life. 
In  every  couiTtrj 


nere  are  maiviauais,  men  and  women, 
who  are  going  about  as  though  what  had  happened  had 
made  no  difference,  and  as  though,  after  a  period  of  rest- 
lessness, the  people  will  "settle  down"  to  the  old  style  of 
things.  They;^rejTierely  sleep-walkers.  There  are  others 
who__see^]early_jenou£h^HaTTh^ 

the  people  withLiiLd--apell-wojjj,  and  they  are  struggling 
desperately  to  think  out  new  words  which  may  help  them 
to  regain  their  power  over  simple  minds.  The  old  gangs 
are  organizing  a  new  system  of  defense,  building  a  new 
kind  of  Hindenburg  line  behind  which  they  are  dumping 
their  political  ammunition.  But  their  Hindenburg  line 
is  not  impregnable.     The  angry  murmur  of  the  mob — 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  515 

highly  organized,  disciplined,  passionate,  trained  to  fight, 
is  already  approaching  the  outer  bastions. 

In  Russia  the  mob  is  in  possession,  wiping  the  blood 
out  of  their  eyes  after  the  nightmare  of  anarchy,  encom- 
passed by  forces  of  the  old  regime,  and  not  knowing  yet 
whether  its  victory  is  won  or  how  to  shape  the  new  order 
that  raust  follow  chaos. 

In  Germany  there  is  only  the  psychology  of  stunned 
people,  broken  for  a  time  in  body  and  spirit,  after  stu- 
pendous efforts  and  bloody  losses  which  led  to  ruin  and 
the  complete  destruction  of  their  old  pride,  philosophy, 
and  power.  The  revolution  that  has  happened  there  is 
strange  and  rather  pitiful.  It  was  not  caused  by  the  will- 
power of  the  people,  but  by  a  cessation  of  will-power. 
They  did  not  overthrow  their  ruling  dynasty,  their 
tyrants.  The  tyrants  fled,  and  the  people  were  not  angry, 
nor  sorr}',  nor  fierce,  nor  glad.  They  were  stupefied. 
Members  of  the  old  order  joined  hands  with  those  of  the 
people's  parties,  out  to  evolve  a  republic  with  new  ideals 
based  upon  the  people's  will  and  inspired  by  the  people's\ 
passion.  The_Germans,  after  the  armistice  and  after  the  1 
peace,  had  no  passion,  as  they  had  no  will.  They  were 
in  a  state  of  coma.  The  *^nock-out  blow"  had  happened  i 
to  them»  and  they_were"mcapable  of  action.  I  hey  just/ 
ceased  from  action!  'ihey  iiad  been  betrayecl  to  this  ruin 
by  their  military  and  political  rulers,  but  they  had  not 
vitahty  enough  to  demand  vengeance  on  those  men.  The 
extent  of  their  ruin  was  so  great  that  it  annihilated  anger, 
political  passion,  pride,  all  emotion  except  that  of  despair. 
How  could  they  save  something  out  of  the  remnants  of 
the  power  that  had  been  theirs?  How  could  they  keep 
alive,  feed  their  women  and  children,  pay  their  monstrous 
debts?  They  had  lost  their  faith  as  well  as  their  war. 
Nothing  that  they  had  beheved  was  true.  They  had 
believed  in  their  invincible  armies — and  the  armies  had 
bled  to  death  and  broken.  They  had  believed  in  the 
supreme  mihtary  genius  of  their  war  lords,  and  the  war 
lords,  blunderers  as  well  as  criminals,  had  led  them  to 


5i6  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

the  abyss  and  dropped  them  over.  They  had  believed 
in  the  divine  mission  of  the  German  people  as  a  civilizing 
force,  and  now  they  were  despised  by  all  other  peoples  as 
a  brutal  and  barbarous  race,  in  spite  of  German  music, 
German  folk-songs,  German  art,  German  sentiment.  They 
had  been  abandoned  by  God,  by  the  protecting  hand  of 
the  altes  gutes  Deiitschcs  Gottes  to  whom  many  had  prayed 
for  comfort  and  help  in  those  years  of  war,  in  Protestant 
churches  and  Catholic  churches,  with  deep  piety  and 
childlike  faith.  What  sins  had  they  done  that  they 
-'should  be  abandoned  by  God?  The  invasion  of  Belgium? 
That,  they  argued,  was  a  tragic  necessity.  Atrocities? 
Those  were  (they  believed)  the  inventions  of  their  enemies. 
There  had  been  stern  things  done,  terrible  things,  but 
according  to  the  laws  of  war.  Franc s-tireurs  had  been 
shot.  That  was  war.  Hostages  had  been  shot.  It  was 
to  save  German  lives  from  slaughter  by  civiUans.  Indi- 
vidual brutalities,  yes.  There  were  brutes  in  all  armies. 
The  U-boat  war?  It  was  (said  the  German  patriot)  to 
break  a  blockade  that  was  starving  millions  of  German 
children  to  slow  death,  condemning  millions  to  consump- 
tion, rickets,  all  manner  of  disease.  Nurse  Cavell?  She 
pleaded  guilty  to  a  crime  that  was  punishable,  as  she 
knew,  by  death.  She  was  a  brave  woman  who  took  her 
risk  open-eyed,  and  was  judged  according  to  the  justice 
of  war,  which  is  very  cruel.  Poison-gas?  Why  not,  said 
German  soldiers,  when  to  be  gassed  was  less  terrible  than 
to  be  blown  to  bits  by  high  explosives?  They  had  been 
the  first  to  use  that  new  method  of  destruction,  as  the 
English  were  the  first  to  use  tanks,  terrible  also  in  their 
destructiveness.  Germany  was  guilty  of  this  war,  had 
provoked  it  against  peaceful  peoples?  No!  A  thousand 
times  no.  They  had  been,  said  the  troubled  soul  of  Ger- 
many, encompassed  with  enemies.  They  had  plotted  to 
close  her  in.  Russia  was  a  huge  menace.  France  had 
entered  into  alliance  with  Russia,  and  was  waiting  her 
chance  to  grab  at  Alsace-Lorraine.  Italy  was  ready  for 
betrayal.     England   hated   the   power  of  Germany   and 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  517 

was  in  secret  alliance  with  France  and  Russia,  Germany- 
had  struck  to  save  herself.  "It  was  a  war  of  self-defense, 
to  save  the  Fatherland." 

The  German  people  still  clung  desperately  to  those 
ideas  after  the  armistice,  as  I  found  in  Cologne  and  other 
towns,  and  as  friends  of  mine  who  had  visited  Berlin  told 
me  after  peace  was  signed.  The  Germans  refused  to 
believe  in  accusations  of  atrocity.  They  knew  that  some 
of  these  stories  had  been  faked  by  hostile  propaganda, 
and,  knowing  that,  as  we  know,  they  thought  all  were 
false.  They  said  "Lies — lies — lies!" — and  made  counter- 
charges against  the  Russians  and  Poles.  They  could  not 
bring  themselves  to  believe  that  their  sons  and  brothers 
had  been  more  brutal  than  the  laws  of  war  allow,  and 
what  brutality  they  had  done  was  imposed  upon  them 
by  ruthless  discipline.  But  they  deplored  the  war,  and 
the  common  people,  ex-soldiers  and  civilians,  cursed  the 
rich  and  governing  classes  who  had  made  profit  out  of  it, 
and  had  continued  it  when  they  might  have  made  peace 
with  honor.  That  was  their  accusation  against  their 
leaders — that  and  the  ruthless,  bloody  way  in  which  their 
men  had  been  hurled  into  the  furnace  on  a  gambler's 
chance  of  victory,  while  they  were  duped  by  faked  prom- 
ises of  victory. 

When  not  put  upon  their  defense  by  accusations  against 
the  whole  Fatherland,  the  German  people,  as  far  as  I 
could  tell  by  talking  with  a  few  of  them,  and  by  those 
letters  which  fell  into  our  hands,  revolted  in  spirit  against 
the  monstrous  futility  and  idiocy  of  the  war,  and  were 
convinced  in  their  souls  that  its  origin  lay  in  the  greed 
and  pride  of  the  governing  classes  of  all  nations,  who  had 
used  men's  bodies  as  counters  in  a  devil's  game.  That 
view  was  expressed  in  the  signboards  put  above  the 
parapet,  "We're  all  fools:  let's  all  go  home";  and  in 
that  letter  by  the  woman  who  wrote: 

"For  the  poor  here  it  is  terrible,  and  yet  the  rich,  the 
gilded  ones,  the  bloated  aristocrats,  gobble  up  everything 
in  front  of  our  very  eyes.  .  .  .  All  soldiers — friend  and 
34 


5i8  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

foe — ought  to  throw  down  their  weapons  and  go  on  strike, 
so  that  this  war,  which  enslaves  the  people  more  than 
ever,  may  cease." 

It  is  that  view,  terrible  in  its  simplicity,  which  may 
cause  a  more  passionate  revolution  in  Germany  when  the 
people  awaken  from  their  stupor.  It  was  that  view  which 
led  to  the  Russian  Revolution  and  to  Bolshevism.  It  is 
the  suspicion  which  is  creeping  into  the  brains  of  British 
working-men  and  making  them  threaten  to  strike  against 
any  adventure  of  war,  like  that  in  Russia,  which  seems  to 
them  (unless  proved  otherwise)  on  behalf  of  the  ** gilded 
ones"  and  for  the  enslavement  of  the  peoples. 

Not  to  face  that  truth  is  to  deny  the  passionate  con- 
victions  of  masses  of  men  in  Europe.  That  is  one  key 
to  the  heart  of  the  revolutionary  movement  which  is  surg- 
ing beneath  the  surface  of  our  European  state.  It  is 
the  belief  of  many  brooding  minds  that  almost  as  great 
as  the  direct  guilt  of  the  German  war  lords  was  the  guilt 
of  the  whole  political  society  of  Europe,  whose  secret 
diplomacy  (unrevealed  to  the  peoples)  was  based  upon 
hatred  and  fear  and  rivalry,  in  play  for  imperial  power 
and  the  world's  markets,  as  common  folk  play  dominoes 
for  penny  points,  and  risking  the  lives  of  common  folk  in 
a  gamble  for  enormous  stakes  of  territory,  imperial  pres- 
tige, the  personal  vanity  of  politicians,  the  vast  private 
gain  of  trusts  and  profiteers.  To  keep  the  living  counters 
quiet,  to  make  them  jump  into  the  pool  of  their  own  free 
will  at  the  word  "Go,"  the  statesmen,  diplomats,  trusts, 
and  profiteers  debauch  the  name  of  patriotism,  raise  the 
watchword  of  liberty,  and  play  upon  the  ignorance  of  the 
mob  easily,  skilfully,  by  inciting  them  to  race  hatred,  by 
inflaming  the  brute-passion  in  them,  and  by  concocting 
a  terrible  mixture  of  false  idealism  and  self-interest,  so 
that  simple  minds  quick  to  respond  to  sentiment,  as  well 
as  those  quick  to  hear  the  call  of  the  beast,  rally  shoulder 
to  shoulder  and  march  to  the  battlegrounds  under  the 
spell  of  that  potion.  Some  go  with  a  noble  sense  of  sac- 
rifice, some  with  blood-lust  in  their  hearts,  most  with  the 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  519 

herd-instinct  following  the  lead,  little  knowing  that  they 
are  but  the  pawns  of  a  game  which  is  being  played  behind 
closed  doors  by  the  great  gamblers  in  the  courts  and 
Foreign  Offices,  and  committee-rooms,  and  counting- 
houses,  of  the  political  casinos  in  Europe. 

I  have  heard  the  expression  of  this  view  from  soldiers 
during  the  war  and  since  the  war,  at  street-corners,  in 
tram-cars,  and  in  conversations  with  railway  men, 
mechanics,  policemen,  and  others  who  were  soldiers  a 
year  ago,  or  stay-at-homes,  thinking  hard  over  the  mean-, 
ing  of  the  war.  I  am  certain  that  millions  of  men  are! 
thinking  these  things,  because  I  found  the  track  of  those 
common  thoughts,  crude,  simple,  dangerous,  among 
Canadian  soldiers  crossing  the  Atlantic,  in  Canadian 
towns,  and  injthe_LInited  States,  as  I  had  begun  to  see  the 
trail  of  them  far  back  in  the  early  days  of  the  war  when  I 
moved  among  French  soldiers,  Belgian  soldiers,  and  our 
own  men. 

My  own  behef  is  not  so  simple  as  that.  I  do  not 
divorce  all  peoples  from  their  governments  as  victims  of 
a  subtle  tyranny  devised  by  statesmen  and  diplomats  of 
diabolical  cunning,  and  by  financial  magnates  ready  to 
exploit  human  life  for  greater  gains.  I  see  the  evil  which 
led  to  the  crime  of  the  war  and  to  the  crimes  of  the  peace 
with  deep-spread  roots  to  the  very  foundation  of  human 
society.  The  fear  of  statesmen,  upon  which  all  inter- 
national relations  were  based,  was  in  the  hearts  of  peoples. 
France  was  afraid  of  Germany  and  screwed  up  her  mili- 
tary service,  her  war  preparations,  to  the  limit  of  national 
endurance,  the  majority  of  the  people  of  France  accept- 
ing the  burden  as  inevitable  and  right.  Because  of  her 
fear  of  German}^  France  made  her  alliance  with  Russian 
Czardom,  her  entente  cordiale  with  Imperial  England,  and 
the  French  people  poured  their  money  into  Russian  loans 
as  a  hfe  insurance  against  the  German  menace.  French 
statesmen  knew  that  their  diplomacy  was  supported  by 
the  majority  of  the  people  by  their  ignorance  as  well  as 
by  their  knowledge. 


520  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

So  it  was  in  Germany.  The  spell-words  of  the  German 
war  lords  expressed  the  popular  sentiment  of  the  German 
people,  which  was  largely  influenced  by  the  fear  of  Russia 
in  alHance  with  France,  by  fear  and  envy  of  the  British 
Empire  and  England's  sea-power,  and  by  the  faith  that 
Germany  must  break  through  that  hostile  combinatioa 
at  all  costs  in  order  to  fulfil  the  high  destiny  which  was 
marked  out  for  her,  as  she  thought,  by  the  genius  and 
industry  of  her  people.  The  greed  of  the  ''bloated  aris- 
tocrats" was  only  on  a  bigger  scale  than  the  greed  of  the 
small  shopkeepers.  The  desire  to  capture  new  markets 
belonged  not  only  to  statesmen,  but  to  commercial  trav- 
elers. The  German  peasant  believed  as  much  in  the 
might  of  the  German  armies  as  Hindenburg  and  Luden- 
dorfF.  The  brutahty  of  German  generals  was  not  worse 
than  that  of  the  Unteroffizier  or  the  foreman  of  works,      j 

In  England  there  was  no  traditional  hatred  of  Germany, 
but  for  some  years  distrust  and  suspicions,  which  had  been 
vented  in  the  newspapers,  with  taunts  and  challenges, 
stinging  the  pride  of  Germans  and  playing  into  the  hands 
of  the  Junker  caste. 

Our  war  psychology  was  different  from  that  of  our 
aUies  because  of  our  island  position  and  our  faith  in  sea- 
power  which  had  made  us  immune  from  the  fear  of  in- 
vasion. It  took  some  time  to  awaken  the  people  to  a 
sense  of  real  peril  and  of  personal  menace  to  their  hearths 
and  homes.  To  the  very  end  masses  of  English  folk  be- 
lieved that  we  were  fighting  for  the  rescue  of  other  peoples 
—Belgian,  French,  Serbian,  Rumanian — and  not  for  the 
continuance  of  our  imperial  power. 

The  official  propaganda,  the  words  and  actions  of  Brit- 
ish statesmen,  did  actually  express  the  conscious  and  sub- 
conscious psychology  of  the  multitude.  The  call  to  the 
old  watchwords  of  national  pride  and  imperial  might 
thrilled  the  soul  of  a  people  of  proud  tradition  in  sea-| 
battles  and  land-battles.  Appeals  for  the  rescue  of  "the 
little  nations"  struck  old  chords  of  chivalry  and  senti- 
ment— though  with  a  strange  lack  of  logic  and  sincerity 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  511 

Irish  demand  for  self-government  was  unheeded.  Base 
passions  as  well  as  noble  instincts  were  stirred  easily. 
Greedy  was  the  appetite  of  the  mob  for  atrocity  tales. 
The  more  revolting  they  were  the  quicker  they  were 
swallowed.  The  foul  absurdity  of  the  "corpse-factory" 
was  not  rejected  any  more  than  the  tale  of  the  "crucified 
Canadian  "  (disproved  by  our  own  G.  H.  Q.)  or  the  cutting 
off  of  children's  hands  and  women's  breasts,  for  which  I 
could  find  no  evidence  from  the  only  British  ambulances 
working  in  the  districts  where  such  horrors  were  reported. 
Spy-mania  flourished  in  mean  streets,  German  music  was 
banned  in  English  drawing-rooms.  Preachers  and  pro- 
fessors denied  any  quaHty  of  virtue  or  genius  to  German 
poets,  philosophers,  scientists,  or  scholars.  A  critical 
weighing  of  evidence  was  regarded  as  pro-Germanism  and 
lack  of  patriotism.  Truth  was  delivered  bound  to  pas- 
sion. Hatred  at  home,  inspired  largely  by  feminine  hys- 
teria and  official  propaganda,  reached  such  heights  that 
when  fighting-men  came  back  on  leave  their  refusal  to 
say  much  against  their  enemy,  their  straightforward  asser- 
tions that  Fritz  was  not  so  black  as  he  was  painted,  that 
he  fought  bravely,  died  gamely,  and  in  the  prison-camps 
was  well-mannered,  decent,  industrious,  good-natured, 
were  heard  with  shocked  silence  by  mothers  and  sisters 
who  could  only  excuse  this  absence  of  hate  on  the  score 
of  war-weariness. 

II 

The  people  of  all  countries  were  deeply  involved  in  the 
general  blood-guiltiness  of  Europe.  They  made  no  pas- 
sionate appeal  in  the  name  of  Christ  or  in  the  name  of 
humanity  for  the  cessation  of  the  slaughter  of  boys  and 
the  suicide  of  nations  and  for  a  reconciliation  of  peoples 
upon  terms  of  some  more  reasonable  argument  than  that 
of  high  explosives.  Peace  proposals  from  the  Pope,  from 
Germany,  from  Austria,  were  rejected  with  fierce  denun- 
ciation, most  passionate  scorn,  as  "peace  plots"  and 
**peace  traps,"  not  without  the  terrible  logic  of  the  vicious 


522  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

circle,  because,  indeed,  there  was  no  sincerity  of  renuncia- 
tion in  some  of  those  oflPers  of  peace,  and  the  powers 
hostile  to  us  were  simply  trying  our  strength  and  our 
weakness  in  order  to  make  their  own  kind  of  peace  which 
should  be  that  of  conquest.  The  gamblers,  playing  the 
game  of  "poker,"  with  crowns  and  armies  as  their  stakes, 
were  upheld  generally  by  the  peoples,  who  would  not 
abate  one  point  of  pride,  one  fraction  of  hate,  one  claim 
of  vengeance,  though  all  Europe  should  fall  in  ruin  and 
the  last  legions  of  boys  be  massacred.  There  was  no  call 
from  people  to  people  across  the  frontiers  of  hostihty: 
"Let  us  end  this  homicidal  mania!  Let  us  get  back  to 
sanity  and  save  our  younger  sons.  Let  us  hand  over  to 
justice  those  who  will  continue  the  slaughter  of  our 
('youth!"  There  was  no  forgiveness,  no  generous  instinct, 
no  large-hearted  common  sense  in  any  combatant  nation 
of  Europe.  Like  wolvesthey  had  their  teeth  in  one 
aiiother's  throats7and  wmiljrnotlet  ]^7though__all^loody 
anJexJTausted^jntll  oneshoujdJalFatlOieJasLgasp^o  be 

(m.angled  by  the  others.  Yet  in  each  nation,  even  in  Ger- 
many^  theTe  were  rnen  and  women  who  saw  the  folly  of 
the  war  and  the  crime  of  it,  and  desired  to  end  it  by  some 
act  of  renunciation  and  repentance,  and  by  some  uplifting 
of  the  people's  spirit  to  vault  the  frontiers  of  hatred  and 
the  barbed  wire  which  hedged  in  patriotism.  Some  of 
them  were  put  in  prison.  Most  of  them  saw  the  impos- 
sibility of  counteracting  the  forces  of  insanity  which  had 
made  the  world  mad,  and  kept  silent,  hiding  their  thoughts 
and  brooding  over  them.  The  leaders  of  the  nations  con- 
tinued to  use  mob-passion  as  their  argument  and  justifi- 
cation, excited  it  anew  when  its  fires  burned  low,  focused 
it  upon  definite  objectives,  and  gave  it  a  sense  of  righteous- 
ness by  the  high-sounding  watchwords  of  hberty,  justice, 
honor,  and  retribution.  Each  side  proclaimed  Christ  as 
its  captain  and  invoked  the  blessing  and  aid  of  the  God 
of  Christendom,  though  Germans  were  allied  with  Turks 
and  France  was  full  of  black  and  yellow  men.  The  Ger- 
man people  did  not  try  to  avert  their  ruin  by  denouncing 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  523 

the  criminal  acts  of  their  war  lords  nor  by  deploring  the 
cruelties  they  had  committed.  The  AUies  did  not  help 
them  to  do  so,  because  of  their  lust  for  bloody  vengeance 
and  their  desire  for  the  spoils  of  victory.  The  peoples 
shared  the  blame  of  their  rulers  because  they  v^ere  not 
nobler  than  their  rulers.  They  cannot  now  plead  igno- 
rance or  betrayal  by  false  ideals  which  duped  them,  be- 
cause character  does  not  depend  on  knowledge,  and  it 
was  the  character  of  European  peoples  which  failed  in  the 
crisis  of  the  world's  fate,  so  that  they  followed  the  call- 
back of  the  beast  in  the  jungle  rather  than  the  voice  of 
the  Crucified  One  whom  they  pretended  to  adore. 


Ill 

The  character  of  European  peoples  failed  in  common! 
sense  and  in  Christian  charity.     It  did  not  fail  in  courage 
to  endure  great  agonies,  to  suffer  death  largely,  to  be  | 
obedient  to  the  old  tradition  of  patriotism  and  to  the/ 
stoic  spirit  of  old  fighting  races. 

In  courage  I  do  not  think  there  was  much  difference^ 
between  the  chief  combatants.  The  Germans,  as  a  race, 
were  wonderfully  brave  until  their  spirit  was  broken  by 
the  sure  knowledge  of  defeat  and  by  lack  of  food.  Many 
times  through  all  those  years  they  marched  shoulder  to 
shoulder,  obedient  to  discipline,  to  certain  death,  as  I 
saw  them  on  the  Somme,  like  martyrs.  They  marched 
for  their  Fatherland,  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  the  German 
race,  as  it  had  entered  their  souls  by  the  memory  of  old 
German  songs,  old  heroic  ballads,  their  German  home 
life,  their  German  women,  their  love  of  little  old  towns 
on  hillsides  or  in  valleys,  by  all  the  meaning  to  them  of 
that  word  Germany,  which  is  hke  the  name  of  England 
to  us — who  is  fool  enough  to  think  otherwise  ? — and  fought 
often,  a  thousand  times,  to  the  death,  as  I  saw  their 
bodies  heaped  in  the  fields  of  the  Somme  and  round  their 
pill-boxes  in  Flanders  and  in  the  last  phase  of  the  war 
behind  the  Hindenburg  line  round  their  broken  batteries 


524  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

on  the  way  of  Mons  and  Le  Cateau.  The  German  people 
endured  years  of  semi-starvation  and  a  drain  of  blood 
greater  than  any  other  fighting  people — two  million  dead 
— before  they  lost  all  vitality,  hope,  and  pride  and  made 
their  abject  surrender.  At  the  beginning  they  were  out 
for  conquest,  inspired  by  arrogance  and  pride.  Before 
the  end  they  fought  desperately  to  defend  the  Fatherland 
from  the  doom  which  cast  its  black  shadow  on  them  as 
it  drew  near.  They  were  brave,  those  Germans,  what- 
ever the  brutality  of  individual  men  and  the  cold-blooded 
cruelty  of  their  commanders. 

The  courage  of  France  is  to  me  like  an  old  heroic  song, 
stirring  the  heart.  It  was  medieval  in  its  complete  ad- 
herence to  the  faith  of  valor  and  its  spirit  of  sacrifice  for 
La  Patrie.  If  patriotism  were  enough  as  the  gospel  of 
life — Nurse  Cavell  did  not  think  so — France  as  a  nation 
was  perfect  in  that  faith.  Her  people  had  no  doubt  as  to 
their  duty.  It  was  to  defend  their  sacred  soil  from 
the  enemy  which  had  invaded  it.  It  was  to  hurl  the 
brutes  back  from  the  fair  fields  they  had  ravaged  and 
despoiled.  It  was  to  Uberate  their  brothers  and  sisters 
from  the  outrageous  tyranny  of  the  German  yoke  in  the 
captured  country.  It  was  to  seek  vengeance  for  bloody, 
foul,  and  abominable  deeds. 

In  the  first  days  of  the  war  France  was  struck  by  heavy 
blows  which  sent  her  armies  reeling  back  in  retreat,  but 
before  the  first  battle  of  the  Marne,  when  her  peril  was 
greatest,  when  Paris  seemed  doomed,  the  spirit  of  the 
French  soldiers  rose  to  a  supreme  act  of  faith — ^which  was 
fulfilled  when  Foch  attacked  in  the  center,  when  Manoury 
struck  on  the  enemy's  flank  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
young  Frenchmen  hurled  themselves,  reckless  of  Hfe,  upon 
the  monster  which  faltered  and  then  fled  behind  the  shel- 
ter of  the  Aisne.  With  bloodshot  eyes  and  parched  throats 
and  swollen  tongues,  bUnd  with  sweat  and  blood,  mad 
with  the  heat  and  fury  of  attack,  the  French  soldiers 
fought  through  that  first  battle  of  the  Marne  and  saved 
France  from  defeat  and  despair, 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  525 

After  that,  year  after  year,  they  flung  themselves  against 
the  German  defense  and  died  in  heaps,  or  held  their  Hnes, 
as  at  Verdun,  against  colossal  onslaught,  until  the  dead 
lay  in  masses.  But  the  Hving  said,  "They  shall  not 
pass!"  and  kept  their  word. 

The  people  of  France — above  all,  the  women  of  France 
— behind  the  lines,  were  the  equals  of  the  fighting-men  in 
valor.  They  fought  with  despair,  through  many  black 
months,  and  did  not  yield.  They  did  the  work  of  their 
men  in  the  fields,  and  knew  that  many  of  them — the  sons 
or  brothers  or  lovers  or  husbands — would  never  return 
for  the  harvest-time,  but  did  not  cry  to  have  them  back 
until  the  enemy  should  be  thrust  out  of  France.  Behind 
the  German  line,  under  German  rule,  the  French  people, 
prisoners  in  their  owii  land,  suffered  most  in  spirit,  but 
were  proud  and  patient  in  endurance. 

''Why  don't  your  people  give  in?"  asked  a  German 
officer  of  a  woman  in  Nesle.  "France  is  bleeding  to 
death." 

"We  shall  go  on  for  two  years,  or  three  years,  or  four, 
or  five,  and  in  the  end  we  shall  smash  you,"  said  the 
woman  who  told  me  this. 

The  German  officer  stared  at  her  and  said,  "You  people 
are  wonderful!" 

Yes,  they  were  wonderful,  the  French,  and  their  hatred 
of  the  Germans,  their  desire  for  vengeance,  complete  and 
terrible,  at  all  cost  of  life,  even  though  France  should 
bleed  to  death  and  die  after  victory,  is  to  be  understood 
in  the  heights  and  depths  of  its  hatred  and  in  the  passion 
of  its  love  for  France  and  Hberty.  When  I  think  of 
France  I  am  tempted  to  see  no  greater  thing  than  such 
patriotism  as  that  to  justify  the  gospel  of  hate  against 
such  an  enemy,  to  uphold  vengeance  as  a  sweet  virtue. 
Yet  if  I  did  so  I  should  deny  the  truth  that  has  been  re- 
vealed to  many  men  and  women  by  the  agony  of  the  war 
— that  if  civilization  may  continue  patriotism  is  "noti 
enough,"  that  international  hatred  will  produce  other 
wars  worse  than  this,  in  which  civilization  will  be  sub- 


526  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

merged,  and  that  vengeance,  even  for  dreadful  crimes, 
cannot  be  taken  of  a  nation  without  punishing  the  inno- 
cent more  than  the  guilty,  so  that  out  of  its  cruelty  and 
injustice  new  fires  of  hatred  are  Hghted,  the  demand  for 
vengeance  passes  to  the  other  side,  and  the  devil  finds 
another  vicious  circle  in  which  to  trap  the  souls  of  men 
and  ''catch  'em  all  alive  O!" 

To  deny  that  would  also  be  a  denial  of  the  faith  with 
which  millions  of  young  Frenchmen  rushed  to  the  colors 
in  the  first  days  of  the  war.  It  was  they  who  said,  "This 
is  a  war  to  end  war."  They  told  me  so.  It  was  they  who 
said:  "German  militarism  must  be  killed  so  that  all 
militarism  shall  be  aboUshed.  This  is  a  war  for  liberty." 
So  soldiers  of  France  spoke  to  me  on  a  night  when  Paris 
was  mobiHzed  and  the  tragedy  began.  It  is  a  Frenchman 
— Henri  Barbusse — who,  in  spite  of  the  German  invasion, 
the  outrages  against  his  people,  the  agony  of  France,  has 
the  courage  to  say  that  all  peoples  in  Europe  were  involved 
in  the  guilt  of  that  war  because  of  their  adherence  to  that 
old  barbaric  creed  of  brute  force  and  the  superstitious 
servitude  of  their  souls  to  symbols  of  national  pride  based 
upon  military  tradition.  He  even  denounces  the  salute 
to  the  flag,  instinctive  and  sacred  in  the  heart  of  every 
Frenchman,  as  a  fetish  worship  in  which  the  narrow 
bigotry  of  national  arrogance  is  raised  above  the  rights 
of  the  common  masses  of  men.  He  draws  no  distinction 
between  a  war  of  defense  and  a  war  of  aggression,  because 
attack  is  the  best  means  of  defense,  and  all  peoples  who 
go  to  war  dupe  themselves  into  the  belief  that  they  do 
so  in  defense  of  their  hberties,  and  rights,  and  power,  and 
property.  Germany  attacked  France  first  because  she 
was  ready  first  and  sure  of  her  strength.  France  would 
have  attacked  Germany  first  to  get  back  Alsace-Lorraine, 
to  wipe  out  1870,  if  she  also  had  been  ready  and  sure  of 
her  strength.  The  political  philosophy  on  both  sides  of 
the  Rhine  was  the  same.  It  was  based  on  military  power 
and  rivalry  of  secret  alliances  and  imperial  ambitions. 
The  large-hearted  internationalism  of  Jean  Jaures,  who 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  527 

with  all  his  limitations  was  a  great  Frenchman,  patriot, 
and  idealist,  had  failed  among  his  own  people  and  in 
Germany,  and  the  assassin's  bullet  was  his  reward  for  the 
adventure  of  his  soul  to  lift  civiHzation  above  the  level  of 
the  old  jungle  law  and  to  save  France  from  the  massacre 
which  happened. 

In  war  France  was  wonderful,  most  heroic  in  sacrifice,  1 
most  splendid  in  valor.  In  her  dictated  peace,  which 
was  ours  also,  her  leaders  were  betrayed  by  the  very  evil 
which  millions  of  young  Frenchmen  had  gone  out  to  kill 
at  the  sacrifice  of  their  own  lives.  MiUtarism  was  exalted! 
in  France  above  the  ruins  of  German  militarism.  It  was 
a  peace  of  vengeance  which  punished  the  innocent  more 
than  the  guilty,  the  babe  at  the  breast  more  than  the 
Junker  in  his  Schloss,  the  poor  working-woman  more  than 
the  war  lord,  the  peasant  who  had  been  driven  to  the 
shambles  more  than  Sixt  von  Arnim  or  Rupprecht  of 
Bavaria,  or  Ludendorff,  or  Flindenburg.  It  is  a  peace 
that  can  only  be  maintained  by  the  power  of  artillery 
and  by  the  conscription  of  every  French  boy  who  shall 
be  trained  for  the  next  "war  of  defense"  (twenty  years 
hence,  thirty  years  hence),  when  Germany  is  strong  again 
— stronger  than  France  because  of  her  population,  stronger 
then,  enormously,  than  France,  in  relative  numbers  of 
able-bodied  men  than  in  August,  1914.  So  if  that  phi- 
losophy continue — and  I  do  not  think  it  will — the  old  fear 
will  be  re-established,  the  old  burdens  of  armament  will 
be  piled  up  anew,  the  people  of  France  will  be  weighed 
down  as  before  under  a  military  regime  stifling  their 
liberty  of  thought  and  action,  wasting  the  best  years  of 
their  boyhood  in  barracks,  seeking  protective  alliances, 
buying  allies  at  great  cost,  establishing  the  old  spy- 
system,  the  old  diplomacy,  the  old  squahd  ways  of  Inter- 
national poHtics,  based  as  before  on  fear  and  force.  Mar- 
shal Foch  was  a  fine  soldier.  Clemenceau  was  a  strong 
Minister  of  War.  There  was  no  man  great  enough  in 
France  to  see  beyond  the  passing  triumph  of  mlhtary 
victory  and  by  supreme  generosity  of  soul  to  hft  their 


528  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

enemy  out  of  the  dirt  of  their  despair,  so  that  the  new 
German  Repubhc  should  arise  from  the  ruins  of  the 
Empire,  remorseful  of  their  deeds  in  France  and  Belgium, 
with  all  their  rage  directed  against  their  ancient  tyranny, 
and  with  a  new-born  spirit  of  democratic  liberty  reaching 
across  the  old  frontiers. 

Is  that  the  foolish  dream  of  the  sentimentahst?  No, 
more  than  that;  for  the  German  people,  after  their  agony, 
were  ready  to  respond  to  generous  deaHng,  pitiful  in  their 
need  of  it,  and  there  is  enough  sentiment  in  German  hearts 
— the  most  sentimental  people  in  Europe — to  rise  with  a 
surge  of  emotion  to  a  new  gospel  of  atonement  if  their 
old  enemies  had  offered  a  chance  of  grace.  France  has 
not  won  the  war  by  her  terms  of  peace  nor  safeguarded 
her  frontiers  for  more  than  a  few  uncertain  years.  By 
harking  back  to  the  old  philosophy  of  militarism  she  has 
re-estabUshed  peril  amid  a  people  drained  of  blood  and 
deeply  in  debt.  Her  support  of  reactionary  forces  in 
Russia  is  to  establish  a  government  which  will  guarantee 
the  interest  on  French  loans  and  organize  a  new  military 
regime  in  aUiance  with  France  and  England.  Meanwhile 
France  looks  to  the  United  States  and  British  people  to 
protect  her  from  the  next  war,  when  Germany  shall  be 
strong  again.  She  is  playing  the  mihtarist  role  without 
the  strength  to  sustain  it. 


IV 

What  of  England?  .  .  .  Looking  back  at  the  immense 
effort  of  the  British  people  in  the  war,  our  high  sum  of 
sacrifice  in  blood  and  treasure,  and  the  patient  courage  of 
our  fighting-men,  the  world  must,  and  does,  indeed,  ac- 
knowledge that  the  old  stoic  virtue  of  our  race  was  called 
out  by  this  supreme  challenge,  and  stood  the  strain. 
The  traditions  of  a  thousand  years  of  history  filled  with 
war  and  travail  and  adventure,  by  which  old  fighting 
races  had  blended  with  different  strains  of  blood  and 
temper — Roman,  Celtic,  Saxon,  Danish,  Nornian     sur- 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  529 

vlved  in  the  fiber  of  our  modern  youth,  country-bred  or 
city-bred,  in  spite  of  the  weakening  influences  of  slum- 
dom,  vicious  environment,  ill-nourishment,  clerkship,  and 
sedentary  life.  The  Londoner  was  a  good  soldier.  The 
Liverpools  and  Manchesters  were  hard  and  tough  in 
attack  and  defense.  The  South  Country  battalions  of 
Devons  and  Dorsets,  Sussex  and  Somersets,  were  not 
behindhand  in  ways  of  death.  The  Scots  had  not  lost 
their  fire  and  passion,  but  were  terrible  in  their  onslaught. 
The  Irish  battalions,  with  recruiting  cut  oflf  at  the  base, 
fought  with  their  old  gallantry,  until  there  were  few  to 
answer  the  last  roll-call.  The  Welsh  dragon  encircled 
Mametz  Wood,  devoured  the  ** Cockchafers"  on  Pilkem 
Ridge,  and  was  hard  on  the  trail  of  the  Black  Eagle  in 
the  last  oflFensive.  The  Australians  and  Canadians  had 
all  the  British  quality  of  courage  and  the  benefit  of  a 
harder  physique,  gained  by  outdoor  life  and  unweakened 
ancestry.  In  the  mass,  apart  from  neurotic  types  here 
and  there  among  officers  and  men,  the  stock  was  true  and 
strong.  The  spirit  of  a  seafaring  race  which  has  the  salt 
in  its  blood  from  Land's  End  to  John  o'  Groat's  and  back 
again  to  Wapping  had  not  been  destroyed,  but  answered 
the  ruffle  of  Drake's  drum  and,  with  simplicity  and 
gravity  in  royal  navy  and  in  merchant  marine,  swept  the 
highways  of  the  seas,  hunted  worse  monsters  than  any 
fabulous  creatures  of  the  deep,  and  shirked  no  dread  ad- 
venture in  the  storms  and  darkness  of  a  spacious  hell. 
The  men  who  went  to  Zeebrugge  were  the  true  sons  of 
those  who  fought  the  Spanish  Armada  and  singed  the 
King  o'  Spain's  beard  in  Cadiz  harbor.  The  victors  of 
the  Jutland  battle  were  better  men  than  Nelson's  (the 
scourings  of  the  prisons  and  the  sweepings  of  the  press- 
gang)  and  not  less  brave  in  frightful  hours.  Without  the 
service  of  the  British  seamen  the  war  would  have  been 
lost  for  France  and  Italy  and  Belgium,  and  all  of  us. 

The  flower  of  our  youth  went  out  to  France  and  Flan- 
ders, to  Egypt,  Palestine,  Gallipoli,  Mesopotamia,  and 
Saloniki,   and  it  was   a  fine  flower  of  gallant  boyhood, 


530  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

clean,  for  the  most  part  eager,  not  brutal  except  by  in- 
tensive training,  simple  in  minds  and  hearts,  chivalrous 
in  instinct,  without  hatred,  adventurous,  laughter-loving, 
and  dutiful.  That  is  God's  truth,  in  spite  of  vice-rotted, 
criminal,  degenerate,  and  brutal  fellows  in  many  battal- 
ions, as  in  all  crowds  of  men. 

In  miUions  of  words  during  the  years  of  war  I  recorded 
the  bravery  of  our  troops  on  the  western  front,  their 
patience,  their  cheerfulness,  suffering,  and  agony;  yet 
with  all  those  words  describing  day  by  day  the  incidents 
of  their  life  in  war  I  did  not  exaggerate  the  splendor  of 
their  stoic  spirit  or  the  measure  of  their  sacrifice.  The 
heroes  of  mythology  were  but  paltry  figures  compared 
with  those  who,  in  the  great  war,  went  forward  to  the 
roaring  devils  of  modern  gun-fire,  dwelt  amid  high  ex- 
plosives more  dreadful  than  dragons,  breathed  in  the 
fumes  of  poison-gas  more  foul  than  the  breath  of  Medusa, 
watched  and  slept  above  mine-craters  which  upheaved 
the  hell-fire  of  Pluto,  and  defied  thunderbolts  more  cer- 
tain in  death-dealing  blows  than  those  of  Jove. 

Something  there  was  in  the  spirit  of  our  men  which  led 
them  to  endure  these  things  without  revolt — ideals  higher 
than  the  selfish  motives  of  life.  They  did  not  fight  for 
greed  or  glory,  not  for  conquest,  nor  for  vengeance. 
Hatred  was  not  the  inspiration  of  the  mass  of  them,  for 
I  am  certain  that  except  in  hours  when  men  "see  red" 
there  was  no  direct  hatred  of  the  men  in  the  opposite 
trenches,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  queer  sense  of  fellow- 
feeling,  a  humorous  sympathy  for  "old  Fritz,"  who  was 
in  the  same  bloody  mess  as  themselves.  Our  generals,  it 
is  true,  hated  the  Germans.  "I  should  like  one  week  in 
Cologne,"  one  of  them  told  me,  before  there  seemed  ever 
a  chance  of  getting  there,  "and  I  would  let  my  men  loose 
in  the  streets  and  turn  a  blind  eye  to  anything  they  liked 
to  do." 

Some  of  our  officers  were  inspired  by  a  bitter,  unrelent- 
ing hate. 

"If  I  had  a  thousand  Germans  in  a  row,"  one  of  them 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  531 

said  to  me,  "I  would  cut  all  their  throats,  and  enjoy  the 
job. 

But  that  was  not  the  mentality  of  the  men  in  the  ranks, 
except  those  who  were  murderers  by  nature  and  pleasure. 
They  gave  their  cigarettes  to  prisoners  and  filled  their 
water-bottles  and  chatted  in   a  friendly  way  with  any 
German  who  spoke  a  little  English,  as  I  have  seen  them 
time  and  time  again  on  days  of  battle,  in  the  fields  of 
battle.     There  were  exceptions  to  this   treatment,   but 
even  the  Australians  and  the  Scots,  who  were  most  fierce 
in  battle,  giving  no  quarter  sometimes,  treated  their  pris- 
oners  with    humanity   when   they   were   bundled   back. 
Hatred  was  not  the  motive  which  made  our  men  endure, 
all  things.     It  was  rather,  as  I  have  said,  a  refusal  in  their  1 
souls  to  be  beaten  in  manhood  by  all  the  devils  of  war,  by  \ 
all  its  terrors,  or  by  its  beastliness,  and  at  the  back  of  all 
the  thought  that  the  old  country  was  "up  against  it"  and  | 
that  they  were  there  to  avert  the  evil. 

Young  soldiers  of  ours,  not  only  of  ofllicer  rank,  but  of 
''other  ranks,"  as  they  were  called,  were  inspired  at  the 
beginning,  and  some  of  them  to  the  end,  with  a  simple, 
boyish  ideahsm.  They  saw  no  other  causes  of  war  than 
German  brutahty.  The  enemy  to  them  was  the  monster 
who  had  to  be  destroyed  lest  the  world  and  its  beauty 
should  perish — and  that  was  true  so  long  as  the  individual 
German,  who  loathed  the  war,  obeyed  the  discipline  of 
the  herd-leaders  and  did  not  revolt  against  the  natural 
laws  which,  when  the  war  had  once  started,  bade  him  die 
in  defense  of  his  own  Fatherland.  Many  of  those  boys 
of  ours  made  a  dedication  of  their  lives  upon  the  altar  of 
sacrifice,  beUeving  that  by  this  service  and  this  sacrifice 
they  would  help  the  victory  of  civihzation  over  barbarism, 
and  of  Christian  morality  over  the  devil's  law.  They 
believed  that  they  were  fighting  to  dethrone  militarism, 
to  insure  the  happiness  and  hberties  of  civilized  peoples, 
and  were  sure  of  the  gratitude  of  their  nation  should  they 
not  have  the  fate  to  fall  upon  the  field  of  honor,  but  go 
home  bhnd  or  helpless. 


532  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

I  have  read  many  letters  from  Doys  now  dead  in  which 
they  express  that  faith. 

"Do  not  grieve  for  me,"  wrote  one  of  them,  "for  I  shall 
be  proud  to  die  for  my  country's  sake."     • 

"I  am  happy,"  wrote  another  (I  quote  the  tenor  of  his 
letters),  "because,  though  I  hate  war,  I  feel  that  this  is  the 
war  to  end  war.  We  are  the  last  victims  of  this  way  of 
argument.  By  smashing  the  German  war-machine  we 
shall  prove  for  all  time  the  criminal  folly  of  militarism 
and  Junkerdom." 

There  were  young  idealists  Hke  that,  and  they  were  to 
be  envied  for  their  faith,  which  they  brought  with  them 
from  public  schools  and  from  humble  homes  where  they 
had  read  old  books  and  heard  old  watchwords.  I  think, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war  there  were  many  like  that. 
But  as  it  continued  year  after  year  doubts  crept  in,  dread- 
ful suspicions  of  truth  more  complex  than  the  old  sim- 
plicity, a  sense  of  revolt  against  sacrifice  unequally  shared 
and  devoted  to  a  purpose  which  was  not  that  for  which 
they  had  been  called  to  fight. 

They  had  been  told  that  they  were  fighting  for  liberty. 
But  their  first  lesson  was  the  utter  loss  of  individual  liberty 
under  a  discipline  which  made  the  private  soldier  no  more 
than  a  number.  They  were  ordered  about  like  galley- 
slaves,  herded  about  hke  cattle,  treated  individually  and 
in  the  mass  with  utter  disregard  of  their  comfort  and 
well-being.  Often,  as  I  know,  they  were  detrained  at 
rail-heads  in  the  wind  and  rain  and  by  ghastly  errors  of 
staff-work  kept  waiting  for  their  food  until  they  were 
weak  and  famished.  In  the  base  camps  men  of  one  bat- 
talion were  drafted  into  other  battalions,  where  they  lost 
their  old  comrades  and  were  unfamiliar  with  the  speech 
and  habits  of  a  crowd  belonging  to  diff'erent  counties,  the 
Sussex  men  going  to  a  Manchester  regiment,  the  York- 
shire men  being  drafted  to  a  Surrey  unit.  By  R.  T.  O.'s 
and  A.  M.  L.  O.'s  and  camp  commandments  and  town 
majors  and  staff"  pups  men  were  bullied  and  bundled 
(ibout,  not  like  human  beings,  but  Hke  dumb  beasts,  and 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  533 

in  a  thousand  ways  injustice,  petty  tyranny,  hard  work, 
degrading  punishments  for  trivial  offenses,  struck  at  their 
souls  and  made  the  name  of  personal  liberty  a  mockery. 
From  their  own  individuality  they  argued  to  broader 
issues.  Was  this  war  for  liberty?  Were  the  masses  of 
men  on  either  side  fighting  with  free  will  as  free  men? 
Those  Germans — were  they  not  under  discipline,  each 
man  of  them,  forced  to  fight  whether  they  liked  it  or  not? 
Compelled  to  go  forward  to  sacrifice,  with  machine-guns 
behind  them  to  shoot  them  down  if  they  revolted  against 
their  slave-drivers?  What  hberty  had  they  to  follow 
their  conscience  or  their  judgment — "Theirs  not  to  reason 
why,  theirs  but  to  do  and  die" — like  all  soldiers  in  all 
armies.  Was  it  not  rather  that  the  masses  of  men  en- 
gaged in  slaughter  were  serving  the  purpose  of  powers 
above  them,  rival  powers,  greedy  for  one  another's  markets, 
covetous  of  one  another's  wealth,  and  callous  of  the  lives 
of  humble  men?  Surely  if  the  leaders  of  the  warring 
nations  were  put  together  for  even  a  week  in  some  such 
place  as  Hooge,  or  the  Hohenzollern  redoubt,  afflicted  by 
the  usual  harassing  fire,  poison-gas,  mine  explosions,  lice, 
rats,  and  the  stench  of  rotting  corpses,  with  the  certainty 
of  death  or  dismemberment  at  the  week-end,  they  would 
settle  the  business  and  come  to  terms  before  the  week  was 
out.  I  heard  that  proposition  put  forward  many  times 
by  young  officers  of  ours,  and  as  an  argument  against  their 
own  sacrifice  they  found  it  unanswerable. 


The  condition  and  psychology  of  their  own  country  as 
they  read  about  it  in  the  Paris  Daily  Mail,  which  was  first 
to  come  into  their  billets,  filled  some  of  these  young  men 
with  distress  and  disgust,  strengthened  into  rage  when 
they  went  home  on  leave.  The  deliberate  falsification  of 
news  (the  truth  of  which  they  heard  from  private  chan- 
nels) made  them  discredit  the  whole  presentation  of  our 
case  and  state.    They  said,  "Propaganda!"  with  a  sharp 


534  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

note  of  scorn.  The  breezy  optimism  of  public  men, 
preachers,  and  journalists,  never  downcast  by  black  news, 
never  agonized  by  the  slaughter  in  these  fields,  mini- 
mizing horrors  and  loss  and  misery,  crowing  over  the 
enemy,  prophesying  early  victory  which  did  not  come, 
accepting  all  the  destruction  of  manhood  (while  they 
stayed  safe)  as  a  necessary  and  inevitable  "misfortune," 
had  a  depressing  effect  on  men  who  knew  they  were 
doomed  to  die,  in  the  law  of  averages,  if  the  war  went  on. 
*'  Damn  their  optimism ! "  said  some  of  our  officers.  "  It's 
too  easy  for  those  behind  the  hnes.  It  is  only  we  who  have 
the  right  of  optimism.  It's  we  who  have  to  do  the  dirty 
work!  They  seem  to  think  we  hke  the  job!  What  are 
they  doing  to  bring  the  end  nearer?" 

The  frightful  suspicion  entered  the  heads  of  some  of 
our  men  (some  of  those  I  knew)  that  at  home  people  liked 
the  war  and  were  not  anxious  to  end  it,  and  did  not  care 
a  jot  for  the  sufferings  of  the  soldiers.  Many  of  them 
came  back  from  seven  days'  leave  fuming  and  sullen. 
Everybody  was  having  a  good  time.  Munition-workers 
were  earning  wonderful  wages  and  spending  them  on 
gramophones,  pianos,  furs,  and  the  "pictures."  Every- 
body was  gadding  about  in  a  state  of  joyous  exultation. 
The  painted  flapper  was  making  herself  sick  with  the 
sweets  of  life  after  office  hours  in  government  employ, 
where  she  did  little  work  for  a  lot  of  pocket-money.  The 
society  girl  was  dancing  bare-legged  for  "war  charities," 
pushing  into  bazaars  for  the  "poor,  dear  wounded,"  get- 
ting her  pictures  into  the  papers  as  a  "notable  war- 
worker,"  married  for  the  third  time  in  three  years;  the 
middle-class  cousin  was  driving  staff-officers  to  White- 
hall, young  gentlemen  of  the  Air  Service  to  Hendon, 
junior  secretaries  to  their  luncheon.  Millions  of  girls 
were  in  some  kind  of  fancy  dress  with  buttons  and  shoul- 
der-straps, breeches  and  puttees,  and  they  seemed  to  be 
making  a  game  of  the  war  and  enjoying  it  thoroughly. 
Oxford  dons  were  harvesting,  and  proud  of  their  prowess 
with  the  pitchfork — behold  their  patriotism! — while  the 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  535 

boys  were  being  blown  to  bits  on  the  Yser  Canal.  Miners 
were  striking  for  more  wages,  factory  hands  were  downing 
tools  for  fewer  hours  at  higher  pay,  the  government  was 
paying  any  price  for  any  labor — while  Tommy  Atkins 
drew  his  one-and-twopence  and  made  a  Httle  go  a  long 
way  in  a  wayside  estaminet  before  jogging  up  the  Menin 
road  to  have  his  head  blown  off.  The  government  had 
created  a  world  of  parasites  and  placemen  housed  in 
enormous  hotels,  where  they  were  engaged  at  large  sal- 
aries upon  mysterious  unproductive  labors  which  seemed 
to  have  no  result  in  front-line  trenches.  Government 
contractors  were  growing  fat  on  the  life  of  war,  amassing 
vast  fortunes,  juggling  with  excess  profits,  battening  upon 
the  flesh  and  blood  of  boyhood  in  the  fighting-Hnes. 
These  old  men,  these  fat  men,  were  breathing  out  fire 
and  fur}^  against  the  Hun,  and  vowing  by  all  their  gods 
that  they  would  see  their  last  son  die  in  the  last  ditch 
rather  than  agree  to  any  peace  except  that  of  destruction. 
There  were  "fug  committees"  (it  was  Lord  Kitchener's 
word)  at  the  War  Oflfice,  the  Board  of  Trade,  the  Foreign 
Office,  the  Home  Office,  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  the 
Ministry  of  Information,  where  officials  on  enormous 
salaries  smoked  cigars  of  costly  brands  and  decided  how 
to  spend  vast  sums  of  public  money  on  "organization" 
which  made  no  difference  to  the  man  stifling  his  cough 
below  the  parapet  in  a  wet  fog  of  Flanders,  staring  across 
No  Man's  Land  for  the  beginning  of  a  German  attack. 

In  all  classes  of  people  there  was  an  epidemic  of  danc- 
ing, jazzing,  card-playing,  theater-going.  They  were  keep- 
ing their  spirits  up  wonderfully.  Too  well  for  men 
slouching  about  the  streets  of  London  on  leave,  and  won- 
dering at  all  this  gaiety,  and  thinking  back  to  the  things 
they  had  seen  and  forward  to  the  things  they  would  have 
to  do.  People  at  home,  it  seemed,  were  not  much  inter- 
ested in  the  life  of  the  trenches;  anyhow,  they  could  not 
understand.  The  soldier  Hstened  to  excited  tales  of  air 
raids.  A  bomb  had  fallen  in  the  next  street.  The  win- 
dows had  been  broken.     Many  people  had  been  killed  in 


536  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

a  house  somewhere  in  Hackney,  It  was  frightful.  The 
Germans  were  devils.  They  ought  to  be  torn  to  pieces, 
every  one  of  them.  The  soldier  on  leave  saw  crowds  of 
people  taking  shelter  in  underground  railways,  working- 
men  among  them,  sturdy  lads,  panic-stricken.  But  for 
his  own  wife  and  children  he  had  an  evil  sense  of  satis- 
faction in  these  sights.  It  would  do  them  good.  They 
would  know  what  v/ar  meant — ^just  a  little.  They  would 
not  be  so  easy  in  their  damned  optimism.  An  air  raid.? 
Lord  God,  did  they  know  what  a  German  barrage  was 
like.f*  Did  they  guess  how  men  walked  day  after  day 
through  harassing  fire  to  the  trenches?  Did  they  have 
any  faint  idea  of  life  in  a  sector  where  men  stood,  slept, 
ate,  worked,  under  the  fire  of  eight-inch  shells,  five-point- 
nines,  trench-mortars,  rifle-grenades,  machine-gun  bul- 
lets, snipers,  to  say  nothing  of  poison-gas,  long-range  fire 
on  the  billets  in  small  farmsteads,  and  on  every  moonHght 
night  air  raids  above  wooden  hutments  so  closely  crowded 
into  a  small  space  that  hardly  a  bomb  could  fall  without 
killing  a  group  of  men. 

*'0h,  but  you  have  your  dugouts!"  said  a  careless  little 
lady. 

The  soldier  smiled. 

It  was  no  use  talking.  The  people  did  not  want  to 
hear  the  tragic  side  of  things.  Bairnsfather's  "Ole  Bill" 
seemed  to  them  to  typify  the  spirit  of  the  fighting-man. 
.  .  .*"Alfamo',  Kaiser!".  .  . 

The  British  soldier  was  gay  and  careless  of  death — ■ 
always.  Shell-fire  meant  nothing  to  him.  If  he  were 
killed-well,  after  all,  what  else  could  he  expect.?  Wasn't 
that  what  he  was  out  for?  The  twice-married  girl  knew 
a  charming  boy  in  the  air  force.  He  had  made  love  to 
her  even  before  CharUe  was  "done  in."  These  dear  boys 
were  so  greedy  for  love.  She  could  not  refuse  them,  poor 
darlings!  Of  course  they  had  all  got  to  die  for  liberty, 
and  that  sort  of  thing.  It  was  very  sad.  A  terrible  thing 
— war!  .  .  .  Perhaps  she  had  better  give  up  dancing  for  a 
week,  until  Charlie  had  been  put  into  the  casualty  lists. 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  537 

"What  are  we  fighting  for?"  asked  officers  back  from 
leave,  turning  over  the  pages  of  the  Sketch  and  Tatler, 
with  pictures  of  race-meetings,  strike-m.eetings,  bare- 
backed beauties  at  war  bazaars,  and  portraits  of  profiteers 
in  the  latest  honors  Hst.  "Are  we  going  to  die  for  these 
swine?  These  parasites  and  prostitutes?  Is  this  the  war 
for  noble  ideals,  hberty,  Christianity,  and  civilization? 
To  hell  with  all  this  filth!  The  world  has  gone  mad  and 
we  are  the  victims  of  insanity." 

Some  of  them  said  that  below  all  that  froth  there  were 
deep  and  quiet  waters  in  England.  They  thought  of  the 
anguish  of  their  own  wives  and  mothers,  their  noble 
patience,  their  uncomplaining  courage,  their  spiritual 
faith  in  the  purpose  of  the  war.  Perhaps  at  the  heart 
England  was  true  and  clean  and  pitiful.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  many  people  at  home  were  suffering  more  than  the 
fighting-men,  in  agony  of  spirit.  It  was  unwise  to  let 
bitterness  poison  their  brains.  Anyhow,  they  had  to  go 
on.     How  long,  how  long,  O  Lord  ? 

"How  long  is  it  going  to  last?"  asked  the  London 
Rangers  of  their  chaplain.  He  lied  to  them  and  said 
another  three  months.  Always  he  had  absolute  knowl- 
edge that  the  war  would  end  three  months  later.  That 
was  certain.  "Courage!"  he  said.  "Courage  to  the  end 
of  the  last  lap!" 

Most  of  the  long-service  men  were  dead  and  gone  long 
before  the  last  lap  came.  It  was  only  the  new  boys  who 
went  as  far  as  victory.  He  asked  permission  of  the  gen- 
eral to  withdraw  nineteen  of  them  from  the  fine  to  in- 
struct them  for  Communion.  They  were  among  the 
best  soldiers,  and  not  afraid  of  the  ridicule  of  their  fellows 
because  of  their  religious  zeal.  The  chaplain's  main 
purpose  was  to  save  their  lives,  for  a  while,  and  give  them 
a  good  time  and  spiritual  comfort.  They  had  their  good 
time.  Three  weeks  later  came  the  German  attack  on 
Arras  and  they  were  all  killed.     Every  man  of  them. 

The  chaplain,  an  Anglican,  found  it  hard  to  reconcile 
Christ  ianity  with  such  a  war  as  this,  but  he  did  not  camou-^ 


538  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

flage  the  teachings  of  the  Master  he  tried  to  serve.  He 
preached  to  his  men  the  gospel  of  love  and  forgiveness  of 
enemies.  It  was  reported  to  the  general,  who  sent  for 
him. 

**Look  here,  I  can't  let  you  go  preaching  *soft  stuff* 
to  my  men.  I  can't  allow  all  that  nonsense  about  love. 
My  job  is  to  teach  them  to  hate.  You  must  either  co- 
operate with  me  or  go." 

The  chaplain  refused  to  change  his  faith  or  his  teaching, 

'^nd  the  general  thought  better  of  his  intervention. 

/    For  all  chaplains  it  was  difficult.     Simple  souls  were 

/bewildered  by  the  conflict  between  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity and  the  spirit  of  war.     MauyLoLthem — officers  as 

Iwell  as  men — wgreblasphemous  in  their  scorn  of  "parson 
iptuff,"  some  of  themJ[ri£htfTniy  ironical. 

A  friend  of  mine  watched  two  chaplains  passing  by. 
One  of  them  was  a  tall  man  with  a  crown  and  star  on  his 
shoulder-strap. 

"I    wonder,"    said    my    friend,    with  false  simplicity, 
"whether  Jesus  Christ  would  have  been   a  Heutenant- 
colonel?" 
/    On  the  other  hand,  many  men  found  help  in  reli^ion^ 

Vand  sought  its_comfort  with  a  spiritual  craving.  They 
did  not  argue  abouFChnstian  ethics  and  modern  warfare. 
Close  to  death  in  the  midst  of  tragedy,  conscious  in  a 
strange  way  of  their  own  spiritual  being  and  of  a  spirit- 
uality present  among  masses  of  men  above  the  muck  of 
war,  the  stench  of  corruption,  and  fear  of  bodily  extinc- 
tion, they  groped  out  toward  God.  They  searched  for 
some  divine  wisdom  greater  than  the  folly  of  the  world, 
for  a  divine  aid  which  would  help  them  to  greater  courage. 
The  spirit  of  God  seemed  to  come  to  them  across  No 
Man's  Land  with  pity  and  comradeship.  CathoHc  sol- 
diers  h^d  a  simpler  sfrnn^pr  faith  than  men  of  Protestant 
denominations,  whose  faith  depended  more  on  etTiical 
rguments  and  intellectual  reasonings.  Catholic  chap- 
lains had  an  easier  task.  Leaving  aside  all  argument, 
they   heard   the  confessions  of  the   soldiers,   gave   them 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  539 

absolution  for  their  sins,  said  mass  for  them  in  wayside 
barns,  administered  the  sacraments,  held  the  cross  to 
their  lips  when  they  fell  mortally  wounded,  anointed  them 
when  the  surgeon's  knife  was  at  work,  called  the  names 
of  Jesus  and  Mary  into  dying  ears.  There  was  no  need 
of  argument  here.  The  old  faith  which  has  survived 
many  wars,  many  plagues,  and  the  old  wickedness  of 
men  was  still  full  of  consolation  to  those  who  accepted 
it  as  little  children,  and  by  their  own  agony  hoped  for 
favor  from  the  Man  of  Sorrows  who  was  hanged  upon  a 
cross,  and  found  a  mother-love  in  the  vision  of  Mary, 
which  came  to  them  when  they  were  in  fear  and  pain 
and  the  struggle  of  death.  The  padre  had  a  definite  job 
to  do  in  the  trenches  and  for  that  reason  was  allowed 
more  liberty  in  the  line  than  other  chaplains.  Battalion 
officers,  surgeons,  and  nurses  were  patient  with  mysteri^- 
ous  rites  which  they  did  not  understand,  but  which  gave 
comfort,  as  they  saw,  to  wounded  men;  and  the  heroism 
with  which  many  of  those  priests  worked  under  fire,  care-* 
less  of  their  own  lives,  exalted  by  spiritual  fervor,  yet  for 
the  most  part  human  and  humble  and  large-hearted  and 
tolerant,  aroused  a  general  admiration  throughout  the 
army.  Many  of  the  Protestant  clergy  were  equally  de- 
voted, but  they  were  handicapped  by  having  to  rely 
more  upon  providing  physical  comforts  for  the  men  than 
upon  spiritual  acts,  such  as  anointing  and  absolution,  which 
were  accepted  without  question  by  Catholic  soldiers. 

Yet  the  Catholic  Church,  certain  of  its  faith,  and  all 
other  churches  claimmg  that  they  teach  the  gospel  of 
Christ,  have  been  challenged  to  explain  their  attitude 
during  the  war  and  the  relation  of  their  teaching  to  the 
world-tragedy,  the  Great  Crime,  which  has  happened. 
It  will  not  be  easy  for  them  to  do  so.  They  will  have  to 
explain  how  it  is  that  German  bishops,  priests,  pastors, 
and  flocks,  undoubtedly  sincere  in  their  professions  of 
faith,  deeply  pious,  as  our  soldiers  saw  in  Cologne,  and 
fervent  in  their  devotion  to  the  sacraments  on  their  side 
of  the  fighting-line,  as  the  Irish  Catholics  on  our  side, 


540  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

were  able  to  reconcile  this  piety  with  their  war  of  aggres- 
sion. The  faith  of  the  Austrian  Catholics  must  be  ex- 
plained in  relation  to  their  crimes,  if  they  were  criminal, 
as  we  say  they  were,  in  leading  the  way  to  this  war  by 
their  ultimatum  to  Serbia.  If  Christianity  has  no  re- 
st raining  influence  upon  the  brutal  instincts  of  those  wh o 
profpy^s  ^nA  follow  its  faith,  then  surely  it  is  time  the  world 
abandoned  so  jneff£C_tiye_a^creed  and  turned  to  other  laws 
likely  to  have  moreinfluence  on  human  relationships. 
That,  brutally,  is  the  argument  of  the  thinking  world 
against  the  clergy  of  all  nations  who  all  claimed  to  be 
acting  according  to  the  justice  of  God  and  the  spirit  of 
Christ.  It  is  a  powerful  argument,  for  the  simple  mind, 
rejecting  casuistry,  cuts  straight  to  the  appalHng  contrast 
between  Christian  profession  and  Christian  practice,  and 
says:  ''Here,  in  this  war,  there  was  no  conflict  between 
one  faith  and  another,  but  a  murderous  death-struggle 
between  many  nations  holding  the  same  faith,  preaching 
the  same  gospel,  and  claiming  the  same  God  as  their  pro- 
tector. Let  us  seek  some  better  truth  than  that  hypoc- 
risy! Let  us,  if  need  be,  in  honesty,  get  back  to  the  sav- 
age worship  of  national  gods,  the  Ju-ju  of  the  tribe." 
//  My  own  belief  is  that  the  war  was  no  proof  against  the 

/Christian  faith,  but  rather  is  a  revelation  that  we  are  as 
desperately  in  need  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  as  at  any  time 
in  the  history  of  mankind.  But  I  think  the  clergy  of  all 
nations,  apart  from  a  heroic  and  saintly  few,  subordinated 
their  faith,  which  is  a  gospel  of  charity,  to  national  limita- 
tions. TlTey_^V£re__p£triots^befoj;e^  th^j^  and 
their  patriotism  was  sometimes  as  limited,  as  narrow,  as 
fierce,  and  as  bloodthirsty  as  that  of  the  people  who 
looked  to  them  for  truth  and  light.  They  were  often 
fiercer,  narrower,  and  more  desirous  of  vengeance  than 

\Vhe  soldiers  who  fought,  because  it  is  now  a  known  truth 
that  the  soldiers,  German  and  Austrian,  French  and 
Italian  and  British,  were  sick  of  the  unending  slaughter 
long  before  the  ending  of  the  war,  and  would  have  made 
a  peace  more  fair  than  that  which  now  prevails  if  it  had 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  541 

been  put  to  the  common  vote  in  the  trenches;  whereas 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  Archbishop  of  Cologne, 
and  the  clergy  who  spoke  from  many  pulpits  in.  many 
nations,  under  the  Cross  of  Christ,  still  stoked  up  the 
fires  of  hate  and  urged  the  armies  to  go  on  fighting  **in 
the  cause  of  justice, "  "for  the  defense  of  the  Fatherland,'* 
**for  Christian  righteousness,"  to  the  bitter  end.  Those 
words  are  painful  to  write,  but  as  I  am  writing  this  book 
for  truth's  sake,  at  all  cost,  I  let  them  stand.  .  .  . 


VI 

The  entire  aspect  of  the  war  was  changed  by  the  Rus- 
sian Revolution,  followed  by  the  collapse  of  the  Russian 
armies  and  the  Peace  of  Brest-Litovsk,  when  for  the  first 
time  the  world  heard  the  strange  word  "  Bolshevism," 
and  knew  not  what  it  meant. 

The  Russian  armies  had  fought  bravely  in  the  first 
years  of  the  war,  with  an  Oriental  disregard  of  death. 
Under  generals  in  German  pay,  betrayed  by  a  widespread 
net  of  anarchy  and  corruption  so  villainous  that  arms  and 
armaments  sent  out  from  England  had  to  be  bribed  on 
their  way  from  one  official  to  another,  and  never  reached 
the  front,  so  foul  in  callousness  of  human  life  that  soldiers 
were  put  into  the  fighting-line  without  rifle  or  ammuni- 
tion, these  Russian  peasants  flung  themselves  not  once, 
but  many  times,  against  the  finest  troops  of  Germany, 
with  no  more  than  naked  bayonets  against  powerful 
artillery  and  the  scythe  of  machine-gun  fire,  and  died  like 
sheep  in  the  slaughter-houses  of  Chicago.  Is  it  a  wonder 
that  at  the  last  they  revolted  against  this  immolation, 
turned  round  upon  their  tyrants,  and  said:  "You  are  the 
enemy.     It  is  you  that  we  will  destroy"? 

By  this  new  revelation  they  forgot  their  hatred  of 
Germans.  They  said:  "You  are  our  brothers;  we  have 
no  hatred  against  you.  We  do  not  want  to  kill  you. 
Why  should  you  kill  us?  We  are  all  of  us  the  slaves  of 
bloodthirsty  castes,  who  use  our  flesh  for  their  ambitions, 


542  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

Do  not  shoot  us,  brothers,  but  join  hands  against  the 
common  tyranny  which  enslaves  our  peoples."  They 
went  forward  with  outstretched  hands,  and  were  shot 
down  Hke  rabbits  by  some  Germans,  and  by  others  were 
not  shot,  because  German  soldiers  gaped,  wide-eyed,  at 
this  new  gospel,  as  it  seemed,  and  said:  *'They  speak 
words  of  truth.     Why  should  we  kill  one  another?'* 

The  German  war  lords  ordered  a  forward  movement, 
threatened  their  own  men  with  death  if  they  fraternized 
with  Russians,  and  dictated  their  terms  of  peace  on  the 
old  lines  of  military  conquest.  But  as  Ludendorff  has 
confessed,  and  as  we  now  know  from  other  evidence, 
many  German  soldiers  were  "infected"  with  Bolshevism 
and  lost  their  fighting  spirit. 

Russia  was  already  in  anarchy.  Constitutional  gov- 
ernment had  been  replaced  by  the  Soviets  and  by  com- 
mittees of  soldiers  and  workmen.  Kerensky  had  fled. 
Lenin  and  Trotzky  were  the  Marat  and  Danton  of  the 
Revolution,  and  decreed  the  Reign  of  Terror.  Tales  of 
appalling  atrocity,  some  true,  some  false  (no  one  can  tell 
how  true  or  how  false),  came  through  to  France  and  Eng- 
land. It  was  certain  that  the  whole  fabric  of  society  in 
Russia  had  dissolved  in  the  wildest  anarchy  the  world 
has  seen  in  modern  times,  and  that  the  Bolshevik  gospel 
of  "brotherhood"  with  humanity  was,  at  least,  rudely 
"interrupted"  by  wholesale  murder  within  its  own 
boundaries. 

One  other  thing  was  certain.  Having  been  relieved  of 
the  Russian  menace,  Germany  was  free  to  withdraw  her 
armies  on  that  front  and  use  all  her  striking  force  in  the 
west.  It  should  have  cautioned  our  generals  to  save 
their  men  for  the  greatest  menace  that  had  confronted 
them.  But  without  caution  they  fought  the  battles  of 
1917,  in  Flanders,  as  I  have  told. 

In  1917  and  in  the  first  half  of  1918  there  seemed  no 
ending  to  the  war  by  military  means.  Even  many  of 
our  generals  who  had  been  so  breezy  in  their  optimism 
believed   now  that   the  end   must   come   by   diplomatic 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  543 

means — a  "peace  by  understanding."  I  had  private 
talks  with  men  in  high  command,  who  acknowledged 
that  the  way  must  be  found,  and  the  British  mind  pre- 
pared for  negotiations,  because  there  must  come  a  limit 
to  the  drain  of  blood  on  each  side.  It  was  to  one  rnan 
in  the  world  that  many  men  in  all  arrnies  looked  for, a 
way  mil-  of  this  frightful  imp-a&se. 

President  Wilson  had  raised  new  hope  among  many 
men  who  otherwise  were  hopeless..   He  not  only  spoke 
high  words,  but  dehned  the  meanings  of  them.     His  defi- 
nition of  liberty  seemed  sound  and  true,  promising  the 
self-determination  of  peoples.     His  offer  to  the  German 
people  to  deal  generously  with  them  if  they  overthrew 
their  tyranny  raised  no  quarrel  among  British  soldiers. 
His  hope  of  a  new  diplomacy,  based  upon  **open  cove- 
nants openl}^  arrived  at,"  seemed  to  cut  at  the  root  of 
the  old  evil  in  Europe  by  which  the  fate  of  peoples  had-v 
been  in  the  hands  of  the  few.     His  Fourteen  Points  set  j 
out  clearly  and  squarely  a  just  basis  of  peace.     His  advo- 
cacy of  a  League  of  Nations  held  out  2  vision  of  a  new 
world  by  which  the  great  and  small  democracies  should  be 
united  by  a  common  pledge  to  preserve  peace  and  submit! 
their  differences  to  a  supreme  court  of  arbitration.     Herei( 
at  last  was  a  leader  of  the  world,  with  a  clear  call  to  the' 
nobility  in  men  rather  than  to  their  base  passions,  a  gospel]  / 
which  would  raise  civihzation  from  the  depths  into  which 
it  had  fallen,  and  a  practical  remedy  for  that  suicidal 
mania  which  was  exhausting  the  combatant  nations. 

I  think  there  weremany  millions  of  men  on  each  side 
of  the  fighting-hne  who  thanked  God  because  President 
Wilson  had  come  witirXVisdom  greater  than  the  folly 
which  was  ours  to  lead  the  way  to  an  honorable  peace 
and  a  new  order  of  nations.  I_was  one  of  them.  .  .  . 
Months  passed,  and  there  was  contmual  fighting,  con- 
tinued slaughter,  and  no  sign  that  ideas  would  prevail 
over  force.  The  Germans  launched  their  great  offensive, 
broke  through  the  British  lines,  and  afterward  through 
the  French  lines,  and  there  were  held  and  checked  long 


544  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

enough  for  our  reserves  to  be  flung  across  the  Channel — ■ 
300,000  boys  from  England  and  Scotland,  who  had  been 
held  in  hand  as  the  last  counters  for  the  pool.  The  Ameri- 
can army  came  in  tidal  waves  across  the  Atlantic,  flooded 
our  back  areas,  reached  the  edge  of  the  battlefields,  were 
a  new  guaranty  of  strength.  Their  divisions  passed 
mostly  to  the  French  front.  With  them,  and  with  his 
own  men,  magnificent  in  courage  still,  and  some  of  ours, 
Foch  had  his  army  of  reserve,  and  struck. 

So  the  war  ended,  after  all,  by  military  force,  and  by 
military  victory  greater  than  had  seemed  imaginable  or 
possible  six  months  before. 

In  the  peace  terms  that  followed  there  was  but  little 
race  of  those  splendid  ideas  which  had  been  proclaimed 
y  President  Wilson.  On  one  point  after  another  he 
eakened,  and  was  beaten  by  the  old  militarism  which 
at  enthroned  in  the  council-chamber,  with  its  foot  on 
the  neck  of  the  enemy.  The  "self-determination  of  peo- 
ples" was  a  hollow  phrase  signifying  nothing.  Open 
covenants  openly  arrived  at  were  mocked  by  the  closed 
doors  of  the  Conference.  When  at  last  the  terms  were 
pubhshed  their  merciless  severity,  their  disregard  of 
racial  boundaries,  their  creation  of  hatreds  and  vendettas 
which  would  lead,  as  sure  as  the  sun  should  rise,  to  new 
warfare,  staggered  humanity,  not  only  in  Germany  and 
Austria,  but  in  every  country  of  the  world,  where  at  least 
minorities  of  people  had  hoped  for  some  nobler  vision  of 
the  world's  needs,  and  for  some  heahng  remedy  for  the 
evils  which  had  massacred  its  youth.  The  League  of 
Nations,  which  had  seemed  to  promise  so  well,  was 
hedged  round  by  limitations  which  made  it  look  bleak 
and  barren.  Still  it  was  peace,  and  the  rivers  of  blood 
had  ceased  to  flow,  and  the  men  were  coming  home  again. 
.  .  .  Home  again! 

VII 

The  men  came  home  in  a  queer  mood,  startling  to  those 
who  had  not  watched  them  "out  there,"  and  to  those  who 


FOR  WHAT  MEN   DIED  545 

welcomed  peace  with  flags.  Even  before  their  home- 
coming, which  was  delayed  week  after  week,  month  after 
month,  unless  they  were  lucky  young  miners  out  for  the 
victory  push  and  back  again  quickly,  strange  things 
began  to  happen  in  Prance  and  Flanders,  Egypt  and 
Palestine.  Men  who  had  been  long  patient  became  sud- 
denly impatient.  Men  who  had  obeyed  all  discipline 
broke  into  disobedience  bordering  on  mutiny.  They 
elected  spokesmen  to  represent  their  grievances,  like 
trade-unionists.  They  "answered  back"  to  their  officers 
in  such  large  bodies,  with  such  threatening  anger,  that  it 
was  impossible  to  give  them  "Field  Punishment  Number 
One,"  or  any  other  number,  especially  as  their  battahon 
officers  sympathized  mainly  with  their  point  of  view. 
They  demanded  demobihzation  according  to  their  terms 
of  service,  which  was  for  "the  duration  of  the  war."  They 
protested  against  the  gross  inequalities  of  selection  by 
which  men  of  short  service  were  sent  home  before  those 
who  had  been  out  in  1914,  191 5,  1916.  They  demanded 
justness,  fair  play,  and  denounced  red  tape  and  official 
lies.  "We  want  to  go  home!"  was  their  shout  on  parade. 
A  serious  business,  subversive  of  discipline. 

Similar  explosions  were  happening  in  England.  Bodies 
of  men  broke  camp  at  Folkestone  and  other  camps,  dem- 
onstrated before  town  halls,  demanded  to  speak  with 
mayors,  generals,  any  old  fellows  who  were  in  authority, 
and  refused  to  embark  for  France  until  they  had  definite 
pledges  that  they  would  receive  demobilization  papers 
without  delay.  Whitehall,  the  sacred  portals  of  the  War 
Office,  the  holy  ground  of  the  Horse  Guards'  Parade,  were 
invaded  by  bodies  of  men  who  had  commandeered  am- 
bulances and  lorries  and  had  made  long  journeys  from 
their  depots.  They,  too,  demanded  demobilization.  They 
refused  to  be  drafted  out  for  service  to  India,  Egypt, 
Archangel,  or  anywhere.  They  had  "done  their  bit," 
according  to  their  contract.  It  was  for  the  War  Office  to 
fulfil  its  pledges.  "Justice"  was  the  word  on  their  lips, 
and  it  was  a  word  which  put  the  wind  up  (as  soldiers  say) 


546  NOW  IT  C\N  BE  TOLD 

any  stafF-officers  and  officials  who  had  not  studied  the 
laws  of  justice  as  they  concern  private  soldiers,  and  who 
had  dealt  with  them  after  the  armistice  and  after  the 
peace  as  they  had  dealt  with  them  before — as  numbers, 
counters  to  be  shifted  here  and  there  according  to  the 
needs  of  the  High  Command.  What  was  this  strange  word 
** justice"  on  soldiers'  hps?  .  .  .  Red  tape  squirmed  and 
writhed  about  the  business  of  demobilization.  Orders 
were  made,  communicated  to  the  men,  canceled  even  at 
the  railway  gates.  Promises  were  made  and  broken. 
Conscripts  were  drafted  off  to  India,  Egypt,  Mesopotamia, 
Archangel,  against  their  will  and  contrary  to  pledge. 
Men  on  far  fronts,  years  absent  from  their  wives  and 
homes,  were  left  to  stay  there,  fever-stricken,  yearning 
for  home,  despairing.  And  while  the  old  war  was  not 
yet  cold  in  its  grave  we  prepared  for  a  new  war  against 
Bolshevik  Russia,  arranging  for  the  spending  of  more 
millions,  the  sacrifice  of  more  boys  of  ours,  not  openly, 
with  the  consent  of  the  people,  but  on  the  sly,  with  a  fine 
art  of  camouflage. 

The  purpose  of  the  new  war  seemed  to  many  men  who 
had  fought  for  "liberty"  an  outrage  against  the  "self- 
determination  of  peoples"  which  had  been  the  funda- 
mental promise  of  the  League  of  Nations,  and  a  blatant 
hypocrisy  on  the  part  of  a  nation  which  denied  self- 
government  to  Ireland.  The  ostensible  object  of  our  in- 
tervention in  Russia  was  to  liberate  the  Russian  masses 
from  "the  bloody  tyranny  of  the  Bolsheviks,"  but  this 
ardor  for  the  liberty  of  Russia  had  not  been  manifest 
during  the  reign  of  Czardom  and  grand  dukes  when 
there  were  massacres  of  mobs  in  Moscow,  bloody  Sundays 
in  St.  Petersburg,  pogroms  in  Riga,  floggings  of  men  and 
girls  in  many  prisons,  and  when  free  speech,  hberal  ideas, 
and  democratic  uprisings  had  been  smashed  by  Cossack 
knout  and  by  the  torture  of  Siberian  exile. 

Anyhow,  many  people  beHeved  that  it  was  none  of  our 
business  to  suppress  the  Russian  Revolution  or  to  punish 
the  leaders  of  it,  and  it  was  suspected  by  British  working- 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  547 

men  that  the  real  motive  behind  our  action  was  not  a 
noble  enthusiasm  for  liberty,  but  an  endeavor  to  establish 
a  reactionary  government  in  Russia  in  order  to  crush  a 
philosophy  of  life  more  dangerous  to  the  old  order  in 
Europe  than  high  explosives,  and  to  get  back  the  gold  that 
had  been  poured  into  Russia  by  England  and  France. 
By  a  strange  paradox  of  history,  French  journalists,  for- 
getting their  own  Revolution,  the  cruelties  of  Robespierre 
and  Marat,  the  September  Massacres,  the  torture  of 
Marie  Antoinette  in  the  Tuileries,  the  guillotining  of 
many  fair  women  of  France,  and  after  1870  the  terrors  of 
the  Commune,  were  most  horrified  by  the  anarchy  in 
Russia,  and  most  fierce  in  denunciation  of  the  bloody 
struggle  by  which  a  people  made  mad  by  long  oppres- 
sion and  infernal  tyrannies  strove  to  gain  the  liberties 
of  hfe. 

Thousands  of  British  soldiers  newly  come  from  war  in 
France  were  sullenly  determined  that  they  would  not  be 
dragged  off  to  the  new  adventure.  They  were  not  alone. 
As  Lord  Rothermere  pointed  out,  a  French  regiment 
mutinied  on  hearing  a  mere  unfounded  report  that  it  was 
being  sent  to  the  Black  Sea.  The  United  States  and 
Japan  were  withdrawing.  Onl}^  a  few  of  our  men,  dis- 
illusioned by  the  ways  of  peace,  missing  the  old  comrade- 
ship of  the  ranks,  restless,  purposeless,  not  happy  at 
home,  seeing  no  prospect  of  good  employment,  said: 
"Hell!  .  .  .  Why  not  the  army  again,  and  Archangel,  or 
any  old  where?"  and  volunteered  for  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill's  little  war. 

After  the  trouble  of  demobilization  came  peace  pageants 
and  celebrations  and  flag-wavings.  But  all  was  not  right 
with  the  spirit  of  the  men  who  came  back.  Something 
was  wrong.  They  put  on  civilian  clothes  again,  looked 
to  their  mothers  and  wives  very  much  like  the  young  men 
who  had  gone  to  business  in  the  peaceful  da3^s  before  the 
August  of  '14.  But  they  had  not  come  back  the  same 
men.  Something  had  altered  in  them.  They  were  sub- 
ject to  queer  moods,  queer  tempers,  fits  of  profound  de- 


S48  NOW  IT  CAN   BE  TOLD 

pression  alternating  with  a  restless  desire  for  pleasure. 
Many  of  them  were  easily  moved  to  passion  when  they 
lost  control  of  themselves.  Many  were  bitter  in  their 
speech,  violent  in  opinion,  frightening.  For  some  time, 
while  they  drew  their  unemployment  pensions,  they  did 
not  make  any  effort  to  get  work  for  the  future.  They 
said:  "That  can  wait.  Tve  done  my  bit.  The  country 
can  keep  me  for  a  while.  I  helped  to  save  it.  .  .  .  Let's  go 
to  the  'movies.'"  They  were  Ustless  when  not  excited 
by  some  "show."  Something  seemed  to  have  snapped 
in  them;  their  will-power.  A  quiet  day  at  home  did  not 
appeal  to  them. 

"Are  you  tired  of  me?"  said  the  young  wife,  wistfully. 

Aren't  you  glad  to  be  home?" 

It's  a  dull  sort  of  Hfe,"  said  some  of  them. 

The  boys,  unmarried,  hung  about  street  -  corners, 
searched  for  their  pals,  formed  clubs  where  they  smoked 
incessantly,  and  talked  in  an  aimless  way. 

Then  began  the  search  for  work.  Boys  without  train- 
ing looked  for  jobs  with  wages  high  enough  to  give  them 
a  margin  for  amusement,  after  the  cost  of  living  decently 
had  been  reckoned  on  the  scale  of  high  prices,  mounting 
higher  and  higher.  Not  so  easy  as  they  had  expected. 
jThe  girls  were  clinging  to  their  jobs,  would  not  let  go  of 
jthe  pocket-money  which  they  had  spent  on  frocks.  Em- 
ployers favored  girl  labor,  found  it  efficient  and,  on  the 
\whole,  cheap.  Young  soldiers  v/ho  had  been  very  skilled 
with  machine-guns,  trench-mortars,  hand-grenades,  found 
that  they  were  classed  with  the  ranks  of  unskilled  labor 
in  civil  life.  That  was  not  good  enough.  They  had  fought 
for  their  country.  They  had  served  England.  Now  they 
wanted  good  jobs  with  short  hours  and  good  wages. 
They  meant  to  get  them.  And  meanwhile  prices  were 
rising  in  the  shops..  Suits  of  clothes,  boots,  food,  any- 
thing, were  at  double  and  treble  the  price  of  pre-war  days. 
The  profiteers  were  rampant.  They  were  out  to  bleed 
the  men  who  had  been  fighting.  They  were  defrauding 
the  public  with  sheer,  undisguised  robbery,  and  the  gov- 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  549 

ernment  did  nothing  to  check  them.  England,  they 
thought,  v/as  rotten  all  through. 

Who  cared  for  the  men  who  had  risked  their  '  and 

bore  on  their  bodies  the  scars  of  war?  The  pensioi.o  ^oled 
out  to  blinded  soldiers  would  not  keep  them  alive.  The 
consumptives,  the  gassed,  the  paralyzed,  were  forgotten 
in  institutions  where  they  lay  hidden  from  the  pubHc  eye. 
Before  the  war  had  been  over  six  months  "our  heroes," 
"our  brave  boys  in  the  trenches"  v/ere  without  preference 
in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

Employers  of  labor  gave  them  no  special  consideration. 
In  many  offices  they  were  told  bluntly  (as  I  know)  that 
they  had  "wasted"  three  or  four  years  in  the  army  and 
could  not  be  of  the  same  value  as  boys  just  out  of  school. 
The  officer  class  was  hardest  hit  in  that  way.  They  had 
gone  straight  from  the  public  schools  and  universities  to 
the  army.  They  had  been  lieutenants,  captains,  and 
majors  in  the  air  force,  or  infantry  battalions,  or  tanks, 
or  trench-mortars,  and  they  had  drawn  good  pay,  which 
was  their  pocket-money.  Now  they  were  at  a  loose  end, 
hating  the  idea  of  office-work,  but  ready  to  knuckle  down 
to  any  kind  of  decent  job  with  some  prospect  ahead. 
What  kind  of  job.''  What  knowledge  had  they  of  use  in 
civil  life?  None.  They  scanned  advertisements,  an- 
swered likely  invitations,  were  turned  down  by  elderly 
men  who  said:  "I've  had  two  hundred  applications. 
And  none  of  you  young  gentlemen  from  the  army  are  fit 
to  be  my  office-boy."  They  were  the  same  elderly  men 
who  had  said:  "We'll  fight  to  the  last  ditch.  If  I  had 
six  sons  I  would  sacrifice  them  all  in  the  cause  of  liberty 
and  justice." 

Elderly  officers  who  had  lost  their  businesses  for  their 
country's  sake,  who  with  a  noble  devotion  had  given  up 
everything  to  "do  their  bit,"  paced  the  streets  searching 
for  work,  and  were  shown  out  of  every  office  where  they 
apphed  for  a  post.  I  know  one  officer  of  good  family 
and  distinguished  service  who  hawked  round  a  subscrip- 
tion-book to  private  houses.     It  took  him  more  courage 


550  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

than  he  had  needed  under  shell-fire  to  ring  the  bell  and 
ask  to  see  "the  lady  of  the  house."  He  thanked  God 
every  time  the  maid  handed  back  his  card  and  said,  "Not 
at  home."  On  the  first  week's  work  he  was  four  pounds 
out  of  pocket.  .  .  .  Here  and  there  an  elderly  officer  blew 
out  his  brains.  Another  sucked  a  rubber  tube  fastened 
to  the  gas-jet.  ...  It  would  have  been  better  if  they  had 
fallen  on  the  field  of  honor. 

Where  was  the  nation's  gratitude  for  the  men  who  had 
fought  and  died,  or  fought  and  lived.?  Was  it  for  this 
reward  in  peace  that  nearly  a  million  of  our  men  gave  up 
their  fives.?  That  question  is  not  my  question.  It  is 
the  question  that  was  asked  by  millions  of  men  in  England 
in  the  months  that  followed  the  armistice,  and  it  was 
answered  in  their  own  brains  by  a  bitterness  and  indigna- 
tion out  of  which  may  be  lit  the  fires  of  the  revolutionary 
spirit. 

At  street-corners,  in  tramway  cars,  in  tea-shops  where 
young  men  talked  at  the  table  next  to  mine  I  listened  to 
conversations  not  meant  for  my  ears,  which  made  me 
hear  in  imagination  and  afar  off  (yet  not  very  far,  per- 
haps) the  dreadful  rumble  of  revolution,  the  violence  of 
mobs  led  by  fanatics.  It  was  the  talk,  mostly,  of  de- 
mobilized soldiers.  They  asked  one  another,  "What 
did  we  fight  for?"  and  then  other  questions  such  as, 
"Wasn't  this  a  war  for  liberty?"  or,  "We  fought  for 
the  land,  didn't  we?  Then  why  shouldn't  we  share 
the  land?"  Or,  "Why  should  we  be  bled  white  by 
profiteers?" 

They  mentioned  the  government,  and  then  laughed  in 
a  scornful  way. 

"The  government,"  said  one  man,  "is  a  conspiracy 
against  the  people.  All  its  power  is  used  to  protect  those 
who  grow  fat  on  big  jobs,  big  trusts,  big  contracts.  It 
used  us  to  smash  the  German  Empire  in  order  to  strengthen 
and  enlarge  the  British  Empire  for  the  sake  of  those  who 
grab  the  oil-wells,  the  gold-fields,  the  minerals,  and  the 
markets  of  the  world." 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  551 

VIII 

Out  of  such  talk  revolution  is  born,  and  revolution  will 
not  be  averted  by  pretending  that  such  words  are  not 
being  spoken  and  that  such  thoughts  are  not  seething 
among  our  working-classes.  It  will  only  be  averted  by 
cutting  at  the  root  of  public  suspicion,  by  cleansing  our 
political  state  of  its  corruption  and  folly,  and  by  a  clear, 
strong  call  of  noble-minded  men  to  a  new  way  of  life  in 
which  a  great  people  believing  in  the  honor  and  honesty 
of  its  leadership  and  in  fair  reward  for  good  labor  shall 
face  a  period  of  poverty  with  courage,  and  co-operate 
unselfishly  for  the  good  of  the  commonwealth,  inspired 
by  a  sense  of  fellowship  with  the  workers  of  other  nations. 
We  have  a  long  way  to  go  and  many  storms  to  weather 
before  we  reach  that  state,  if,  by  any  grace  that  is  in  us, 
and  above  us,  we  reach  it. 

For  there  are  disease  and  insanity  in  our  present  state, 
due  to  the  travail  of  the  war  and  the  education  of  the  war. 
The  daily  newspapers  for  many  months  have  been  filled 
with  the  record  of  dreadful  crimes,  of  violence  and  passion. 
Most  of  them  have  been  done  by  soldiers  or  ex-soldiers. 
The  attack  on  the  poHce  station  at  Epsom,  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  town  hall  at  Luton,  revealed  a  brutality  of 
passion,  a  murderous  instinct,  which  have  been  mani- 
fested again  and  again  in  other  riots  and  street  rows  and 
solitary  crimes.  Those  last  are  the  worst  because  they 
are  not  inspired  by  a  sense  of  injustice,  however  false, 
or  any  mob  passion,  but  by  homicidal  mania  and  secret 
lust.  The  many  murders  of  young  women,  the  outrages 
upon  Httle  girls,  the  violent  robberies  that  have  happened 
since  the  demobiUzing  of  the  armies  have  appalled  decent-, 
minded  people.  They  cannot  understand  the  cause  of 
this  epidemic  after  a  period  when  there  was  less  crime 
than  usual. 

The  cause  is  easy  to  understand.     It  is  caused  by  the  i 
discipline  and  training  of  modern  warfare.     Our  armies, 
as  all  armies,  established  an  intensive  culture  of  brutality. 


552  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

They  were  schools  of  slaughter.  It  was  the  duty  of 
officers  like  Col.  Ronald  Campbell — ^**0.  C.  Bayonets" 
(a  delightful  man) — to  inspire  blood-lust  in  the  brains  of 
gentle  boys  who  instinctively  disHked  butcher's  work. 
By  an  ingenious  system  of  psychology  he  played  upon 
their  nature,  calhng  out  the  primitive  barbarism  which 
has  been  overlaid  by  civilized  restraints,  liberating  the 
brute  which  has  been  long  chained  up  by  law  and  the 
social  code  of  gentle  life,  but  lurks  always  in  the  secret 
lairs  of  the  human  heart.  It Js^ifficult  when  the  brute 
has^een  unchained,  for  the  purpose  of  kilHng  Germans, 
ta-getj±IInto  theToIlarlagain  with  a  cry  of^ ''  Down,  dog, 
dgwnll'  Generals,  as  I  have  told,  were  againsttKe  ''soft 
stuff'*  preached  by  parsons,  who  were  not  quite  militar- 
ized, though  army  chaplains.  They  demanded  the  gospel 
of  hate,  not  that  of  love.  But  hate,  when  it  dominates 
the  psychology  of  men,  is  not  restricted  to  one  objective, 
such  as  a  body  of  men  behind  barbed  wire.  It  is  a 
spreading  poison.  It  envenoms  the  whole  mind.  Like 
jealousy 

It  is  the  green-eyed  monster  which  doth  mock 
The  meat  it  feeds  on. 

Our  men,  living  in  holes  in  the  earth  hke  ape-men,  were 
taught  the  ancient  code  of  the  jungle  law,  to  track  down 
human  beasts  in  No  Man's  Land,  to  jump  upon  their 
bodies  in  the  trenches,  to  kill  quickly,  silently,  in  a  raid, 
to  drop  a  hand-grenade  down  a  dugout  crowded  with 
men,  blowing  their  bodies  to  bits,  to  lie  patiently  for  hours 
in  a  shell-hole  for  a  sniping  shot  at  any  head  which  showed, 
to  bludgeon  their  enemy  to  death  or  spit  him  on  a  bit  of 
steel,  to  get  at  his  throat  if  need  be  with  nails  and  teeth. 
The  code  of  the  ape-man  is  bad  for  some  temperaments. 
It  is  apt  to  become  a  habit  of  mind.  It  may  surge  up 
again  when  there  are  no  Germans  present,  but  some  old 
woman  behind  an  open  till,  or  some  policeman  with  a 
bull's-eye  lantern  and  a  truncheon,  or  in  a  street  riot 
where  fellow-citizens  are  for  the  time  being  "the  enemy,'* 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  553 

Death,  their  own  or  other  people's,  does  not  mean  very- 
much  to  some  who,  in  the  trenches,  sat  within  a  few  yards 
of  stinking  corpses,  knowing  that  the  next  shell  might 
make  such  of  them.     Life  was  cheap  in  war.     Is  it  not  u^ 
cheap  in  peace?  .  .  . 

The  discipline  of  military  life  is  mainly  an  imposed 
discipline — mechanical,  and  enforced  in  the  last  resort 
not  by  reason,  but  by  field  punishment  or  by  a  firing 
platoon.  Whereas  many  men  were  made  brisk  and  alert 
by  discipline  and  saw  the  need  of  it  for  the  general  good, 
others  were  always  in  secret  rebellion  against  its  restraints 
of  the  individual  will,  and  as  soon  as  they  were  liberated 
broke  away  from  it  as  slaves  from  their  chains,  and  did 
not  substitute  self-discipline  for  that  which  had  weighed 
heavy  on  them.  With  all  its  discipline,  army  Hfe  was  full 
of  lounging,  hanging  about,  waste  of  time,  waiting  for 
things  to  happen.  It  was  an  irresponsible  life  for  the 
rank  and  file.  Food  was  brought  to  them,  clothes  were 
given  to  them,  entertainments  were  provided  behind  the 
line,  sports  organized,  their  day  ordered  by  high  powers. 
There  was  no  need  to  think  for  themselves,  to  act  for  them- 
selves. They  moved  in  herds  dependent  on  their  leaders. 
That,  too,  was  a  bad  training  for  the  individuahsm  of  civil 
fife.  It  tended  to  destroy  personal  initiative  and  will- 
power. Another  evil  of  the  abnormal  life  of  war  sowed 
the  seeds  of  insanity  in  the  brains  of  men  not  strong  enough 
to  resist  it.  Sexually  they  were  starved.  For  months 
they  lived  out  of  the  sight  and  presence  of  women.  But 
they  came  back  into  villages  or  towns  where  they  were 
tempted  by  any  poor  slut  who  winked  at  them  and  in- 
fected them  with  illness.  Men  went  to  hospital  with 
venereal  disease  in  appalling  numbers.  Boys  were  ruined 
and  poisoned  for  life.  Future  generations  will  pay  the 
price  of  war  not  only  in  poverty  and  by  the  loss  of  the 
unborn  children  of  the  boys  who  died,  but  by  an  enfeebled 
stock  and  the  heritage  of  insanity. 

The  Prime  Minister  said  one  day,  "The  \ynrld  \s  suffer- <^ 
ing  from  shell-ihocL"    That  was  true.     But  it  suffered 


S54  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

[also  from  the  symptoms  of  all  that  illness  which  comes 
\from  syphilis,  whose  breeding-ground  is  war. 

The  majority  of  our  men  were  clean-living  and  clean- 
hearted  fellows  who  struggled  to  come  unscathed  in  soul 
from  most  of  the  horrors  of  war.  They  resisted  the  edu- 
cation of  brutality  and  were  not  envenomed  by  the  gospel 
of  hate.  Out  of  the  dark  depths  of  their  experience  they 
looked  up  to  the  light,  and  had  visions  of  some  better  law 
of  life  than  that  which  led  to  the  world-tragedy.  It 
would  be  a  foul  hbel  on  many  of  them  to  besmirch  their 
honor  by  a  general  accusation  of  lowered  morahty  and 
brutal  tendencies.  Something  in  the  spirit  of  our  race 
and  in  the  quality  of  our  home  life  kept  great  numbers 
of  them  sound,  chivalrous,  generous-hearted,  in  spite  of 
the  frightful  influences  of  degradation  bearing  down  upon 
them  out  of  the  conditions  of  modern  warfare.  But  the 
weak  men,  the  vicious,  the  murderous,  the  primitive,  were 
overwhelmed  by  these  influences,  and  all  that  was  base 
in  them  was  intensified,  and  their  passions  were  unleashed, 
with  what  result  we  have  seen,  and  shall  see,  to  our  sor- 
row and  the  nation's  peril. 

The  nation  was  in  great  peril  after  this  war,  and  that 
peril  will  not  pass  in  our  lifetime  except  by  heroic  reme- 
dies. We  won  victory  in  the  field  and  at  the  cost  of  our 
own  ruin.  We  smashed  Germany  and  Austria  and  Tur- 
key, but  the  structure  of  our  own  wealth  and  industry 
was  shattered,  and  the  very  foundations  of  our  power 
were  shaken  and  sapped.  Nine  months  after  the  armis- 
tice Great  Britain  was  spending  at  the  rate  of  £2,000,000 
a  day  in  excess  of  her  revenue.  She  was  burdened  with 
a  national  debt  which  had  risen  from  645  millions  in  1914 
to  7,800  millions  in  1919.  The  pre-war  expenditure  of 
£200,000,000  per  annum  on  the  navy,  army,  and  civil 
service  pensions  and  interest  on  national  debt  had  risen 
to  750  millions. 

Our  exports  were  dwindling  down,  owing  to  decreased 

/output,  so  that  foreign  exchanges  were  rising  against  us 

and  the  American  dollar  was  increasing  in  value  as  our 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  555 

proud  old  sovereign  was  losing  its  ancient  standard.  So 
that  for  all  imports  from  the  United  States  we  were  pay- j 
ing  higher  prices,  which  rose  every  time  the  rate  of  ex-/ 
change  dropped  against  us.  The  slaughter  of  900,000 
men  of  ours,  the  disablement  of  many  more  than  that, 
had  depleted  outranks  of  labor,  and  there  was  a  paralysis  of 
all  our  industry,  owing  to  the  dislocation  of  its  machinery 
for  purposes  of  war,  the  soaring  cost  of  raw  material,  the 
crippling  effect  of  high  taxation,  the  rise  in  wages  to  meet 
high  prices,  and  the  lethargy  of  the  workers.  Ruin,  im- 
mense, engulfing,  annihilating  to  our  strength  as  a  nation 
and  as  an  empire,  stares  us  brutally  in  the  eyes  at  the 
time  I  write  this  book,  and  I  find  no  consolation  in  the 
thought  that  other  nations  in  Europe,  including  the  Ger- 
man people,  are  in  the  same  desperate  plight,  or  worse. 


IX 

The  nation,  so  far,  has  not  found  a  remedy  for  the  evil 
that  has  overtaken  us.  Rather  in  a  kind  of  madness  that 
is  not  without  a  strange  splendor,  like  a  ship  that  goes 
down  with  drums  beating  and  banners  flying,  we  are 
racing  toward  the  rocks.  At  this  time,  when  we  are 
sorely  stricken  and  in  dire  poverty  and  debt,  we  have 
extended  the  responsibilities  of  empire  and  of  world- 
power  as  though  we  had  illimitable  wealth.  Our  sphere 
of  influence  includes  Persia,  Thibet,  Arabia,  Palestine, 
Egypt — a  vast  part  of  the  Mohammedan  world.  Yet  if 
any  part  of  our  possessions  were  to  break  into  revolt  or 
raise  a  "holy  war"  against  us,  we  should  be  hard  pressed 
for  men  to  uphold  our  power  and  prestige,  and  our  treas- 
ury would  be  called  upon  in  vain  for  gold.  After  the  war 
which  was  to  crush  militarism  the  air  force  alone  pro- 
posed an  annual  expenditure  of  more  than  twice  as  much 
money  as  the  whole  cost  of  the  army  before  the  war. 
While  the  armaments  of  the  German  people,  whom  we 
defeated  in  the  war  against  militarism,  are  restricted  to 
a  few  warships  and  a  navy  of  100,000  men  at  a  cost  reck- 


556  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

oned  as  £10,000,000  a  year,  v/e  are  threatened  with  a 
naval  and  mihtary  program  costing  £300,000,000  a  year. 
Was  it  for  this  our  men  fought?  Was  it  to  estabhsh  a 
new  imperiahsm  upheld  by  the  power  of  guns  that  900,000 
boys  of  ours  died  in  the  war  of  liberation?  I  know  it  was 
otherwise.  There  are  people  at  the  street-corners  who 
know;  and  in  the  tram-cars  and  factories  and  little  houses 
in  mean  streets  where  there  are  empty  chairs  and  the 
portraits  of  dead  boys. 

It  will  go  hard  with  the  government  of  England  if  it 
plays  a  grandiose  drama  before  hostile  spectators  who 
refuse  to  take  part  in  it.  It  will  go  hard  with  the  nation, 
for  it  will  be  engulfed  in  anarchy. 

At  the  present  time,  in  this  August  of  191 9,  when  I 
write  these  words,  five  years  after  another  August,  this 
England  of  ours,  this  England  which  I  love  because  its 
history  is  in  my  soul  and  its  blood  is  in  my  body,  and  I 
have  seen  the  glory  of  its  spirit,  is  sick,  nigh  unto  death. 
Only  great  physicians  may  heal  it,  and  its  old  vitality 
struggling  against  disease,  and  its  old  sanity  against  in- 
sanity. Our  Empire  is  greater  now  in  spaciousness  than 
ever  before,  but  our  strength  to  hold  it  has  ebbed  low 
because  of  much  death,  and  a  strain  too  long  endured, 
and  strangling  debts.  The  workman  is  tired  and  has 
slackened  in  his  work.  In  his  scheme  of  life  he  desires 
more  luxury  than  our  poverty  affords.  He  wants  higher 
wages,  shorter  hours,  and  less  output — reasonable  desires 
in  our  state  before  the  war,  unreasonable  now  because 
the  cost  of  the  war  has  put  them  bej^ond  human  possi- 
bility. He  wants  low  prices  with  high  wages  and  less 
work.  It  is  false  arithmetic  and  its  falsit}^  will  be  proved 
by  a  tremendous  crash. 

Some  crash  must  come,  tragic  and  shocking  to  our 
social  structure.  I  see  no  escape  from  that,  and  only  the 
hope  that  in  that  crisis  the  very  shock  of  it  will  restore 
the  mental  balance  of  the  nation  and  that  all  classes  will 
combine  under  leaders  of  unselfish  purpose,  and  fine  vision, 
eager  for  evolution  and  not  revolution,  for  peace  and  not 


FOR  WHAT  MEN  DIED  557 

for  blood,  for  Christian  charity  and  not  for  hatred,  for 
civilization  and  not  for  anarchy,  to  reshape  the  conditions 
of  our  social  Ufe  and  give  us  a  new  working  order,  with 
more  equaHty  of  labor  and  reward,  duty  and  sacrifice, 
liberty  and  discipline  of  the  soul,  combining  the  virtue  of 
patriotism  with  a  generous  spirit  to  other  peoples  across 
the  old  frontiers  of  hate.  That  is  the  hope  but  not  the 
certainty. 

It  is  only  by  that  hope  that  one  may  look  back  upon 
the  war  with  anything  but  despair.  All  the  lives  of  those 
boys  whom  I  saw  go  marching  up  the  roads  of  France 
and  Flanders  to  the  fields  of  death,  so  splendid,  so  lovely 
in  their  youth,  will  have  been  laid  down  in  vain  if  by  their 
sacrifice  the  world  is  not  uplifted  to  some  plane  a  little 
higher  than  the  barbarity  which  v/as  let  loose  in  Europe. 
They  will  have  been  betrayed  if  the  agony  they  suflPered 
is  forgotten  and  "the  war  to  end  war"  leads  to  prepara- 
tions for  new,  more  monstrous  conflict.  ,r\ 

Or  is  war_the  law  of  hurnan^hfe?  Is  there  something 
more  powerful  than  kaisers  and  castes  which  drives 
masses  of  men  against  other  masses  in  death-struggles 
which  they  do  not  understand  ?  Are  we  really  poor  beasts 
in  the  jungle,  striving  by  tooth_and_cl3W,  high  veTocity 
and  poison-gas,  for  the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  an  endless 
conflict  ?  If  that  is  so,  then  God  mocks  at  us.  Or,  rather, 
if  that  is  so,  there~is  no  God  such  as  we  men  may  love// 
withjove  for  men. 

The  world  will  not  accept  that  message  of  des^ir;  and 
millions  of  men  to-day  who  went  thrduglTtEe^ony  of  the 
war  are  inspired  by  the  humble  belief  that  humanity  may 
be  cured  of  its  cruelty  and  stupidity,  and  that  a  brother- 
hood of  peoples  more  powerful  than  a  League  of  Nations 
may  be  founded  in  the  world  after  its  present  sickness 
and  out  of  the  conflict  of  its  anarchy. 

That  is  the  new  vision  which  leads  men  on,  and  if  we 
can  make  one  step  that  way  it  will  be  better  than  that 
backward  fall  which  civilization  took  when  Germany 
played  the  devil  and  led  us  all  into  the  jungle.     The  devil 


558  NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 

in  Germany  had  to  be  killed.  There  was  no  other  way, 
except  by  helping  the  Germans  to  kill  it  before  it  mas- 
tered them.  Now  let  us  exorcise  our  own  devils  and  get 
back  to  kindness  toward  all  men  of  good  will.  That  also 
is  the  only  way  to  heal  the  heart  of  the  world  and  our  own 

^  state.  Let  us  seek  the  beauty  of  Hfe  and  God's  truth 
c^^  somehow,  remembering  the  boys  who  died  too  soon,  and 
atlthefalsity  and  hatred  of  these  past  five  years.     By 

\jv  blood  and  passion  there  will  be  no  healing.  We  have 
seen  too  much  blood.  We  want  to  wipe  it  out  of  our  eyes 
and  souls.     Let  us  have  Peace. 


.^ 


THE    END 


BOOKS  BY 

JOHN    SPARGO 


RUSSIA  JS  AN  AMERICAN  PROBLEM 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  BOLSHEVISM 

BOLSHEVISM 

SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  EXPLAINED 

AMERICANISM  AND  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY 


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THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  DESERT 

RIDERS  OF   THE  PURPLE  SAGE 

DESERT  GOLD 

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